Showing posts with label wikileaks. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Assange, Wikileaks, Holbrook, and the Disgusting Truth!

In this transcript it is mentioned that Julian Assange is being held in the same prison as was Oscar Wilde who, commenting on the conditions, said "If this is the way her majesty treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any."

There is a great deal of important information here so I'm sending it off as is.

John Pilger and Jeremy Scahill are very admirable journalists and Assange is rising in everyone's opinion, except for those who don't deserve to have one (and, contrary to the cliche, there are many such).

Next will be a great coverage of another prisoner in a far different setting.

Denial in London; Still No Charges Filed in Sweden

Rush Transcript

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AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still in jail in London. On Tuesday, a British court granted Assange bail but then forced him to remain in prison after Swedish authorities decided to challenge the decision. Assange has been detained since last week, when he was arrested in London on an international warrant to face sex crimes allegations in Sweden. His arrest came amidst an international uproar over WikiLeaks’ most recent publication of a massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.
In a dramatic day in court Tuesday, Assange’s supporters broke out in cheers when the London judge granted Assange bail. But when the counsel for the prosecution indicated it would appeal, the judge told Assange he would remain in jail until a hearing at a higher court within 48 hours. If he wins that appeal, Assange will still have to raise 200,000 pounds sterling—more than $300,000—in bail money. He would also be subject to a curfew, be forced to wear an electronic tag, and report to a nearby police station every evening until his next court appearance on January 11th.
Before Tuesday’s hearing, Assange remained defiant, telling his mother, Christine, from his cell he was committed to publishing more secret U.S. cables. In a written statement of his comments supplied to Australia’s Network Seven by his mother, Assange said, quote, "My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have expressed. This circumstance shall not shake them."
Several of Julian Assange’s high-profile supporters have been attending the court proceedings in London and have offered to contribute funds for his bail. They include political commentator and writer Tariq Ali, campaigner Bianca Jagger, filmmaker Ken Loach and veteran Australian journalist John Pilger, who is joining us now from London. John Pilger is an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who has written close to a dozen books and made over 50 documentaries. His latest film premiered last night on television and in theaters throughout Britain. It’s called The War You [Don’t] See and includes interviews with Julian Assange.
John Pilger, we welcome you to Democracy Now!, as well as Julian Assange’s attorney, Mark Stephens. John, why don’t you start off by telling us what the scene—
MARK STEPHENS: Hi, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN:—was like outside the courtroom and the significance of what is happening right now.
JOHN PILGER: Well, the scene outside the courtroom represented how people feel about this. People are overwhelmingly angry and overwhelmingly supportive of Julian Assange and of WikiLeaks. They have no difficulty seeing the injustice, the injustice that has been perpetrated in this rather absurd case in Sweden, but also the importance of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organization in allowing us to get a glimpse of how the world is really run, how and why politicians lie to us. I think it’s—in all my career as a journalist, I’ve never known anything like it. I think we’re seeing a great awakening, and WikiLeaks has been the catalyst for that. And that was very much demonstrated outside the court yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Stephens, maybe for people around the world who are watching and listening to this right now, you can explain what exactly happened in the courtroom, the fact that Julian Assange has been held for more than a week in prison and has not been charged with a crime. Explain how we have come to this point.
MARK STEPHENS: Well, it’s a slightly bizarre situation. He’s wanted for questioning in Sweden. He’s already had one interview with the Swedish prosecutor. He’s wanted for another interview. The Swedish prosecutor has refused to tell him what she wants to interview him about or to give him the nature of the allegations. So, really, what we’re talking about now is an extradition warrant, which they’ve now issued. And so, the question on the extradition warrant is, should he serve his time in prison while the decision about extradition is being made, or should—as the Swedes would have it, should he be sitting in jail, Scrooge-like, over Christmas? Now, the problem we’ve got is that the Swedes seem dead set to try and keep him in jail.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the Interpol red—what red flag is, what exactly the Swedes are saying he has done and they want him for, and what it means for him to be extradited to Sweden, if that’s what’s going to happen.
MARK STEPHENS: OK. An Interpol red notice is a notice sent out, usually secretly, but very bizarrely in this case it’s been made public, which allows the authorities of each state to notify Sweden every time he crosses a port or enters or leaves a country. The matter that he’s wanted for is a sexual misdemeanor, a series of offenses in Sweden. He isn’t charged with that. And the Swedish lawyers tell me that even if he were convicted, he wouldn’t go to jail. So we’re in this rather bonkers position where the Swedish lawyers tell us he wouldn’t go to jail, yet on an extradition warrant, he’s being held in custody. And as you said at the top, Amy, they are some onerous conditions. He’s effectively under house arrest—or, as we said in court yesterday, mansion arrest—because he will be put up in a 600-acre estate, a 10-bedroom mansion near London.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what is happening, that you understand is happening, here in the United States in Virginia? So he is being wanted for questioning about sex crimes in Sweden, but then the United States, the Attorney General Eric Holder, has said something else.
MARK STEPHENS: Excuse me, yes. A bit of a cough.
The position is that—the word swirling around the elites in Stockholm is that the Americans are effectively using this as a holding charge. A holding charge, as you’ll know, is a charge that people have no intention of prosecuting, because it’s meritless, or that it’s such a minor offense that actually the big sucker punch is coming, and we haven’t yet seen that. And the word in Stockholm is that there is a secret grand jury empaneled in Alexandria just near the Pentagon and that they are considering how they might get Julian Assange on criminal charges in the United States. Now, the United States authorities have flatly denied that. Now, if that’s true, then it would be difficult to see how he could be extradited. And, of course, as a lawyer, I can’t see that he’s committed any offense. And indeed a congressional report that came out on the 6th of December said very much the same thing. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate, as will viewers, that he has made some big and powerful enemies.
AMY GOODMAN: A friend of Julian Assange has told Sky News he believes that if he is extradited to Sweden, that he could be sent to the United States. Why would it be easier for him to be sent to the United States from Sweden than from Britain, Mark Stephens?
MARK STEPHENS: That’s a very good question, Amy. And the answer really is that we do have extradition arrangements between the U.K. and the U.S., but the British judges have a long history of looking at them pretty carefully. You’ll be familiar with the case of Gary McKinnon, the young child that hacked into the Pentagon computers, comprehensively embarrassed them, and he’s wanted on an extradition warrant to the United States. That’s been being fought for about three or four years now. And so, the possibility is that the British courts would look at this and scrutinize it in a thorough and independent way. That’s what British judges are; they’re not politically influenced. Whereas I think that it’s felt that the Swedes have perhaps a little more of a soft touch and perhaps, more fairly, are less experienced, the judiciary in Sweden, in dealing with these extradition warrants, and perhaps would—it would go more on the nod from Sweden.
AMY GOODMAN: How much money exactly does Julian Assange have to raise for bail?
MARK STEPHENS: He’s got to raise 200,000 pounds in cash. That’s about $300,000. And, of course, the problem with that is that we finished court after banking hours closed yesterday, so—and getting that kind of money out of a bank, you’ll realize that most banks don’t carry that kind of money. It’s very modest amounts that they carry these days, because we spend most of our money electronically. And, of course, he’s being electronically hobbled by Visa and MasterCard, who have stopped the accounts being—paying money to WikiLeaks. And so, actually gathering that money has meant that he’s had to call on—and we’ve had, on his behalf—to call upon the very generous friends that he has, very high-profile individuals. But even they can’t make money move after banking hours. And, of course, that’s why he was sent back to Wandsworth Prison, the very prison that indeed Oscar Wilde, the Anglo-Irish writer, was held in when he was up for crimes of a very different nature.
AMY GOODMAN: He’s been held in solitary in prison, Mark Stephens?
MARK STEPHENS: Yes, very unusually. Men who are accused of rape are usually released on bail, and they are given bail on condition they don’t contact the alleged victim. So, to find someone in prison is unusual enough. To find conditions as sort of onerous as these put on your bail is incredibly unusual. And to then find that you’re put in prison is even more unusual still. Yet further in the unusual stakes is the fact the he’s on a 23-and-a-half-hour lockdown, although he’s a model prisoner, deprived of access to television, to current affairs information, news, newspapers, magazines and such like. So, he really is on almost a punishment regime.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting. There’s a letter from Women Against Rape, a British organization, in The Guardian newspaper in London. It’s written by Katrin Axelsson in support of Julian Assange. And it says, "Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations. [...] Women don’t take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst." This is a feminist organization in London. Mark Stephens?
MARK STEPHENS: I think that most of us are extremely troubled about this. And I think the reason that we’re troubled is that false allegations of sex crimes are incredibly rare. When they come along, they stink. This one utterly reeks. And, of course, the problem for that, more widely, is that it discourages genuine complaints about rape and sexual misbehaviors. And, of course, it demeans the complaints that are made by women who have genuinely been abused. And so, any of those kind of false allegations really do devalue this. And I’m not surprised that people like Naomi Wolf and—in the Huffington Post and also that letter in The Guardian are really concerned about this, because it is an unusual zeal, as she says. I would say it’s a vindictive campaign, and one has to understand why that vindictive campaign is going on.
AMY GOODMAN: What did the Swedish authorities ask him about in the first questioning of him? And how is it that he hasn’t been released on bail?
MARK STEPHENS: Well, he was granted bail yesterday by the judge, albeit on conditions, and we’re now waiting for the further appeal. The Swedes really clearly didn’t want to abide by the umpire’s decision. And, of course, we’re having every time to have people who have been incredibly generous with their time, people like John Pilger who have come along, other high-profile figures like Bianca Jagger and Jemima Khan, film director Ken Loach, Hanif Kureishi, the author. All sorts of people have come forward, stepped forward. Some of these people don’t even know him and have said, "I believe that there is something really wrong here." And they’ve come to right an injustice. They see an injustice taking place before their eyes, and they are stepping up to the plate to do something about it. And I have to say, I am in awe of those people who have behaved so honorably and so decently.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Mark Stephens, for being with us, attorney for Julian Assange. John Pilger, I’d like to ask you to stay with us. We’re going to play a clip from the film that premiered last night throughout Britain called The War You Don’t See, which has a section on Julian Assange, a man you have come to know, who you call a friend.

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Denial in London; Still No Charges Filed in Sweden

Rush Transcript

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AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the life of the veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who died Monday night at the age of 69 after suffering from a torn aorta. At the time of his death, Holbrooke was serving as President Obama’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He had served under every Democratic president since John F. Kennedy.
He recently described the war in Afghanistan as one of the hardest diplomatic assignments he has faced.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: There’s no Ho Chi Minh. There’s no Slobodan Miloševic . There’s no Palestinian Authority. There is a widely dispersed group of people that we roughly call the enemy.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley described Holbooke as a peacemaker and highlighted his role in brokering the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia.

P.J. CROWLEY: It is, of course, a very sad day here at the State Department. We have lost one of our own and a legendary figure in Richard Holbrooke, who could fill a room, including this one, as he did many times and took great pleasure in engaging the press in advancing whatever it was he was working on, whether it was peace in the Balkans, you know, peace in Congo as U.N. ambassador, or most recently, peace in South Asia in the context of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

AMY GOODMAN: While tributes have been pouring in for Richard Holbrooke, little attention has been paid to his role in implementing and backing U.S. policies that killed thousands of civilians. As Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter administration, Holbrooke oversaw weapons shipments to the Indonesian military as it killed a third of East Timor’s population. In 1980, he played a key role in the Carter administration’s support for a South Korean military crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju that killed hundreds of people. Details of Holbrooke’s role in East Timor and Korea have been entirely ignored by the corporate media since his death—hardly covered before, as well. Richard Holbrooke was also a prominent Democratic backer of the Bush administration’s decision to attack Iraq in 2003.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: I think Saddam has to be dealt with, and I would support an international coalition of the willing to deal with it. The fact is that we all can agree that Saddam is a truly terrible chief of state and is in the process of trying to create—and we don’t know how well he’s done, because the inspectors have been gone for over three years—trying to create weapons of mass destruction.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the legacy of Richard Holbrooke, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, and again, staying with us, John Pilger is with us in London. Jeremy Scahill, Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute, author of the Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. In 1999 he reported daily from Yugoslavia during and after the 78-day NATO bombing. John Pilger is a longtime journalist and filmmaker who has reported extensively on the U.S.-backed Indonesian attack on East Timor, reported extensively on Iraq and Vietnam and Cambodia and many other places.
Jeremy, as we’re coming out of this clip of Richard Holbrooke supporting the Bush administration’s war on Iraq.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, first of all, I mean, Richard Holbrooke, probably more than any U.S. diplomat since Henry Kissinger—and he cut his teeth, of course, during the Vietnam War working under Henry Kissinger—Richard Holbrooke has represented the utter militarization of what is called U.S. diplomacy. He was also at the center of the nexus of U.S. militarists, of aggressive, hawkish, quote-unquote, "diplomats," and the elite, white-shoe media culture. And that’s why you see people like Joe Klein and others falling over themselves to engage in revisionist history about Richard Holbrooke. They only tell one part of the story. And often, in the case of Iraq or Yugoslavia, they’re telling a very one-sided version of history that makes Richard Holbrooke look like something that he wasn’t, and that was a peacemaker. He was a war maker and was someone who extended the tentacles of U.S. foreign policy.
Under the Clinton administration, Holbrooke was sort of the hammer when it came to diplomacy, as he’s been, in a way, under President Obama, though we’ll get to that later with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Let’s remember, when we’re talking about Iraq, Richard Holbrooke wasn’t just speaking as some pundit when he was supporting the Bush administration’s lie-laden case for war in Iraq. He also promoted the idea that Saddam posed a threat with weapons of mass destruction, Richard Holbrooke. But during the Clinton administration, there were the most ruthless economic sanctions in history imposed by the Democrats on the government—or rather, the people—of Iraq, that just targeted the civilian population, denied food and medicine, turned the hospitals of Iraq—and John Pilger knows about this better than anyone, because he did the definitive film on it—turned the hospitals of Iraq into death rows for infants. So, you know, Richard Holbrooke was part of an administration that also bombed Baghdad on multiple occasions in the north and the south of the country, as well, under the guise of the no-fly zones.
AMY GOODMAN: This was during Clinton’s years.
JEREMY SCAHILL: And this was during the Clinton administration. So then, when you fast-forward to the Bush fraudulent case for war, having someone like Richard Holbrooke support it is the embodiment of the continuity of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq. Clinton started the war on Iraq in full after George H.W. Bush invaded and attacked Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and it’s been consistent U.S. policy. And Richard Holbrooke has been a staple of that policy—was a staple of that policy.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back in time. I’ve been to East Timor a number of times during the Indonesian occupation, one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. John Pilger also did a remarkable documentary about it called Death of a Nation. East Timor is a place that was occupied by the fourth-largest military in the world, Indonesia. And it started under Ford and Kissinger and went on to Carter, and Holbrooke was in that administration. A third of the population was killed. In 1997, investigative journalist Allan Nairn went to Brown University, where Richard Holbrooke was speaking, and he questioned him about East Timor.

ALLAN NAIRN: You were the Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter administration at the height of the genocide in Timor, the years of '76, ’77, ’78, ’79, when the killing rose to a peak. And you were the Carter administration's point man on Timor policy. You handled the testimony before Congress and so on. And it was under your watch that the U.S. sent in the OV-10 Bronco planes, the low-flying planes, which were used to bomb and strafe the Timorese out of the hills. Testimony from Catholic Church sources, reports from Amnesty International and others indicated that hundreds of thousands of East Timorese were killed during this period. And during this period, not only was the U.S. sending in these weapons which were used to kill the Timorese, but it was also blocking the U.N. Security Council from taking enforcement action on the two resolutions which called on Indonesia to withdraw its troops without delay. We know this because Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., wrote about it in his memoirs. That was the policy that started under Ford and Kissinger, OK, and you continued that policy.

So, I have two questions. The first is, would you be willing to facilitate the full declassification of documents regarding what the Carter administration, your administration, did in East Timor by granting a waiver under the Privacy Act? And secondly, would you favor the convening, for the case of East Timor, an international war crimes tribunal along the lines of what has been done in Bosnia and Rwanda, along the lines of what President Bush called for in the case of Saddam Hussein in Iraq? And would you be willing to abide by its verdict in regard to your own conduct?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: You know, first of all, we’re not going to have time to deconstruct your question and take it on point by point here. We’ve got other questions, and we need to get to them. But let me say very clearly, first of all, I don’t accept every statement you have just made as fact. Far from it. Moynihan, for example, was not the ambassador during the Carter administration; he was the ambassador during the previous administration.

ALLAN NAIRN: He started it under Ford, and you continued that policy.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Let’s not—I don’t think we’re going to have time to deconstruct this here. I do not accept most of your statements. However, in regard to the last questions, of course I favor declassification. I have no—I have nothing to hide about my own role. If I made a mistake or two along the way, I’ll confront it when that goes—when that comes up. No one is error-free here. But just for the purpose of everyone else in the room, this is not an accurate description of the administration’s policy or my own role in it. As I said in my opening remarks, Indonesia was an important country and remains an important country. And the solution to the problem, as I said to an earlier question, does not, in my view, involve a complete arms cut off. You’re welcome to disagree. But I am interested in consequences of policy. I’m interested in solving the problem. And not—

ALLAN NAIRN: The consequences in this case were genocide: a third of the Timorese population killed.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: If you want to accuse me of genocide, you’re welcome to do so. And if—as far as extending the war crimes tribunal to Timor, or for that matter, Cambodia, where it’s incomprehensibly not of a mandate, I’m all for it. In fact, I have recently written a letter to the Holocaust Commission at the museum recommending that they take this issue on, precisely because it’s incomprehensible to me why various people who are equally as murderous as Radovan Karadžic and Ratko Mladic have never been investigated. But I tell you here, for the benefit of everyone else, that the Timor issue is not as simple as described just now. It just isn’t. This is not what happened, and I don’t think anyone who knows Jimmy Carter or what he stands for would agree that this was a deliberate policy of giving low-flying airplanes or helicopters to the Indonesians so that they could go out and kill people in the hills.

AMY GOODMAN: That was [Richard] Holbrooke responding to journalist Allan Nairn. John Pilger, I want to play a clip from your 1994 film Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy. This is a clip of José Ramos-Horta, then foreign minister in exile of East Timor, who is now the president of East Timor. He describes a bombing with a U.S.-supplied OV-10 Bronco plane in 1977, when Richard Holbrooke was Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter administration.

JOSÉ RAMOS-HORTA: As the months went by, the war went on. One of my sisters, Maria Ortencia, by then 17 years old in 1977, was killed during an air raid carried out by the Indonesian air force using a Bronco aircraft. Two American-supplied Bronco aircraft nose-dived to a village somewhere in the remote countryside and opened fire on the village. At that particular moment, there were no guerrilla troops there, only civilian population. My sister was there. She was running the local school. She and 20 kids, at least, were killed.

AMY GOODMAN: That was José Ramos-Horta, who became a close friend, by the way, of Richard Holbrooke. John Pilger, your response?
JOHN PILGER: Well, look, Richard Holbrooke is the embodiment of rapacious U.S. policy. And I think there’s something interesting here in the—all the commemoration of his career that has gone on, interesting in regard to the WikiLeaks issue, because here we have—and it’s not only in the United States, it’s here, as well: "This great peacemaker, this great statesman, has passed on." Well, that’s just not true. And if we’d had a kind of WikiLeaks glimpse of the truth of Holbrooke’s career, we might not be getting all these effusions at the moment.
Just going back a little bit earlier in my experience, Amy, then I would bring it up to East Timor, but my first knowledge of Richard Holbrooke’s involvement was when the foreign minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Co Thach, in 1978 told me in confidence—Thach is now dead, so I’m sure I can speak about this—he told me that Holbrooke, in 1978, had given him assurances that the administration, of which he was a leading member, of course, at the time, the Carter administration, would, if not normalize with Vietnam, then it would lift the siege. And it was an economic siege, an embargo. A Trading with the Enemy Act was the being imposed on the Vietnamese. There was terrible hardship and starvation in Vietnam, all of it a policy of revenge for expelling the Americans, three years later. Holbrooke had said to Thach, who was—they met together in New York in 1978, and Holbrooke had told him to wait for a call. And Thach said, "I waited in the Holiday Inn on, I think, West 42nd Street for four days, waiting for a call from Holbrooke, which he had promised to let me have and to describe the new policy towards Vietnam. And it never came. He refused to answer my messages." And the imposition of extreme austerity as a policy of revenge continued. That always seemed to me to sum up the kind of duplicitous nature of Holbrooke’s role.
Certainly, as you rightly described—and it’s very interesting listening to Allan Nairn’s excellent questioning of Holbrooke there. I mean, I was told by the senior CIA official in the embassy in Jakarta at the time—Philip Liechty appears in my film—of the kind of support that the regime in Jakarta was getting of aircraft, logistics, Broncos, logistics, armaments, all kinds of support, that were going directly—directly into East Timor, in spite of public declarations by the likes of Holbrooke that this was not happening.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to fast-forward—
JOHN PILGER: So, as Liechty made clear—
AMY GOODMAN: John, because we just have two minutes and we have so many areas to cover, I wanted to fast-forward to Yugoslavia—
JOHN PILGER: OK.
AMY GOODMAN:—where, Jeremy, you lived and covered for years. Talk about your experience.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, Richard Holbrooke was a central player in the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Everyone knows. The whole world knows. Slobodan Miloševic was a mass murderer and a thug. Radovan Karadžic, Ratko Mladic, all of these Bosnian Serb leaders, they were thugs. What never gets talked about is that what Richard Holbrooke and other U.S. officials were doing was supporting Croatian ethnic cleansers that were trained by U.S. private military company MPRI to engage in the single-greatest ethnic cleansing of the war against the Serbs in Krajina.
Then you fast-forward to later in the Clinton administration, Richard Holbrooke was a key player in essentially providing a false pretext for war over Kosovo against Slobodan Miloševic, known as the Rambouillet Accord. The U.S. essentially said to Slobodan Miloševic, "If you don’t sign an agreement that would allow us to occupy your country, allow you to take control of your media outlets, allow our forces to be immunized from prosecution in your country, we are going to bomb you." Richard Holbrooke delivered that ultimatum to Slobodan Miloševic following the Rambouillet discussion. Miloševic, like any leader in the world, rejected an occupation agreement, and so the United States bombed. Holbrooke, when you and I questioned him later at the Overseas Press Club in April of 1999, denied that he had ever said that that was [not] an occupation agreement, when in fact he had said it on Charlie Rose’s show.
At that same event where you and I confronted Richard Holbrooke, the Overseas Press Club Award, he celebrated the bombing of Radio Television Serbia, after Eason Jordan, the president of CNN International, told him it had been bombed. And he said that it was a positive development. On a night when they were honoring foreign correspondents, Richard Holbrooke was praising the outright murder of media workers—16 media workers, including make-up artists and engineers—none of Miloševic’s propagandists killed. RTS was not taken off the air. It was a war crime according to Amnesty International, and praised by Richard Holbrooke. To me, that’s the embodiment of what his career has meant in terms of its projection of U.S. power around the world. There are good victims and bad victims; the media workers of Radio Television Serbia, they deserved to die that day, but the journalists of the United States or China or North Korea who get imprisoned in foreign countries, those are worthy victims. The same can be said about the way the U.S. prosecuted its war in Yugoslavia and in Iraq, Turkey with the Kurds, Richard Holbrooke at the center of it for his whole career.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, a very critical analysis, Jeremy Scahill, John Pilger. I want to thank you both.

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Thursday, December 02, 2010

Flag this message Chomsky, Rants, Ideas, Wikileaks, and Bikinis

Ok, actually, no bikinis here. I just wanted to see what the search engines would do with that.

Now, some rambles: Could someone tell Obama that those millions of people did not vote for him? They vtoed first against John McCain and Sarah Palin (and maybe as VP she would have to keep her mouth shut?). Next, they voted for what you represented yourself to be during the campaigns.

First of all, you just said, in reference to compromising with the Republicans, "Men of good will can work together and iron out their differences." FORGET IT!!! They are not men of good will as you should have found out by the letter you got the next day demanding tax cuts for the rich or no legislation at all, signed by 42 Republicans. Wake up.

You have a nice hammer if only you will use it. Tell them you will simply let ALL THE TAX CUTS OF BUSH expire. Then, tell the public that the Republicans raised their taxes! If you think that is a lie, then lie you asshole! Surely that is how you got elected!

Tell them you will consider the tax cut extension, but first we need the unemployment insurance extended, Medicare and Medicaid supported, and Alan Simpson waterboarded! Use the hammer and compromise on the water-boarding. That's a compromise in the Republican tradition.

No more war funding until the Republicans figure out a way to pay for it. Pass don't ask don't tell repeal as even war-mongers deserve an opportunity to serve freely.

A friend said you were the worst President ever. "Prove me wrong," he said. I couldn't. Viscerally, seeing a tape of Bush and Cheney walking together, maybe with Rummy, I have a feeling you aren't, but no proof whatsoever. In addition, it would contradict my past experience that every President was worse that the previous one. Something happened in the 50s or early 60s that ensured that.

Wikileaks: No matter what you have been told, THERE IS NO INTERPOL ARREST WARRANT out for Assange. He is in hiding, probably because of the next "dump" that will cover banks. He fears for his personal safety. Those people have probably already hired someone from Blackwater to "Hit" him, make him "disappear". His attorney was on Democracy now and there is one hot attorney! She has to be the 1% Steven Wright was talking about when he said "99% of attorney's give the others a bad name." If I'm in a position like that, she's the one I want.

The U.S. did try to send a warrant to the U.K., but it was returned because it was not filled out properly. Not only are we ruled by assholes, but they are incompetent as well?

Anyway, here is Noam, confirming what I thought about the documents: they simply give examples of what we knew about our government all along:

Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"
Chomsky

In a national broadcast exclusive interview, we speak with world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky about the release of more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks. In 1971, Chomsky helped government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg release the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret internal U.S. account of the Vietnam War. Commenting on the revelations that several Arab leaders are urging the United States to attack Iran, Chomsky says, "latest polls show] Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent," Chomsky says. "This may not be reported in the newspapers, but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments and the ambassadors. What this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership." [includes rush transcript]

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Noam Chomsky, author and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, where he taught for over half a century. He is author of dozens of books. His most recent is Hopes and Prospects
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Rush Transcript
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AMY GOODMAN: We have lost David Leigh, investigations editor from The Guardian. He was speaking to us from the busy newsroom there. The Guardian is doing an ongoing series of pieces and exposes on these documents. They are being released slowly by the various news organizations, from The Guardian in London, to Der Spiegel in Germany, to El Pais in Spain, to the New York Times here in the United States.. For reaction to the WikiLeaks documents, we’re joined by world renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books including his latest Hopes and Prospects. Forty years ago, Noam and Howard Zinn helped government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg edit and release the Pentagon Papers that top-secret internal U.S. history of the Vietnam War.

Noam Chomsky joins us from Boston. It is good to have you back again, Noam. Why don’t we start there. Before we talk about WikiLeaks, what was your involvement in the Pentagon Papers? I don’t think most people know about this.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Dan and I were friends. Tony Russo, who also who prepared them and helped leak them. I got advanced copies from Dan and Tony and there were several people who were releasing them to the press. I was one of them. Then I- along with Howard Zinn as you mentioned- edited a volume of essays and indexed the papers.

AMY GOODMAN: So explain how, though, how it worked. I always think this is important- to tell this story- especially for young people. Dan Ellsberg- Pentagon official, top-secret clearance- gets this U.S. involvement in Vietnam history out of his safe, he Xerox’s it and then how did you get your hands on it? He just directly gave it to you?

NOAM CHOMSKY: From Dan Ellsberg and Tony Russo, who had done the Xeroxing and the preparation of the material.

AMY GOODMAN: How much did you edit?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, we did not modify anything. The papers were not edited. They were in their original form. What Howard Zinn and I did was- they came out in four volumes- we prepared a fifth volume, which was critical essays by many scholars on the papers, what they mean, the significance and so on. And an index, which is almost indispensable for using them seriously. That’s the fifth volume in the Beacon Press series.

AMY GOODMAN: So you were then one of the first people to see the Pentagon Papers?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Outside of Dan Ellsberg and Tony Russo, yes. I mean, there were some journalists who may have seen them, I am not sure.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your thoughts today? For example, we just played this clip of New York republican congress member Peter King who says WikiLeaks should be declared a foreign terrorist organization.

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think that is outlandish. We should understand- and the Pentagon Papers is another case in point- that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population. In the Pentagon Papers, for example, there was one volume- the negotiations volume- which might have had a bearing on ongoing activities and Daniel Ellsberg withheld that. That came out a little bit later. If you look at the papers themselves, there are things Americans should have known that others did not want them to know. And as far as I can tell, from what I’ve seen here, pretty much the same is true. In fact, the current leaks are- what I’ve seen, at least- primarily interesting because of what they tell us about how the diplomatic service works.

AMY GOODMAN: The documents’ revelations about Iran come just as the Iranian government has agreed to a new round of nuclear talks beginning next month. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cables vindicate the Israeli position that Iran poses a nuclear threat. Netanyahu said, "Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of sixty years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the threat. If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, with can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace," Netanyahu said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also discussed Iran at her news conference in Washington. This is what she said:

    HILARY CLINTON: I think that it should not be a surprise to anyone that Iran is a source of great concern, not only in the United States. What comes through in every meeting that I have- anywhere in the world- is a concern about Iranian actions and intentions. So, if anything, any of the comments that are being reported on allegedly from the cables confirm the fact that Iran poses a very serious threat in the eyes of many of her neighbors and a serious concern far beyond her region. That is why the international community came together to pass the strongest possible sanctions against Iran. It did not happen because the United States said, "Please, do this for us!" It happened because countries- once they evaluated the evidence concerning Iran’s actions and intentions- reached the same conclusion that the United States reached: that we must do whatever we can to muster the international community to take action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. So if anyone reading the stories about these, uh, alleged cables thinks carefully what they will conclude is that the concern about Iran is well founded, widely shared, and will continue to be at the source of the policy that we pursue with like-minded nations to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Secretary to Hillary Clinton yesterday at a news conference. I wanted to get your comment on Clinton, Netanyahu’s comment, and the fact that Abdullah of Saudi Arabia- the King who is now getting back surgery in the New York- called for the U.S. to attack Iran. Noam Chomsky?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That essentially reinforces what I said before, that the main significance of the cables that are being released so far is what they tell us about Western leadership. So Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. The results are rather striking. They show the Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel- that’s 80. The second major threat is the United States- that’s 77. Iran is listed as a threat by 10%.

With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority- in fact, 57–say that the region would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. 80, 77, say the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. 10 say Iran is the major threat. This may not be reported in the newspapers here- it is in England- but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments, and to the ambassadors. But there is not a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. This seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. The cables to not have any indication of that.

When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here- Clinton and the media- have drawn. There’s also a minor problem; that’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So there is a filtering process. We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there is no question that what is a radical distortion is- or, not even a distortion, a reflection–of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population does not matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy.

There are similar things elsewhere, such as keeping to this region. One of the most interesting cables was a cable from the U.S. ambassador in Israel to Hillary Clinton, which described the attack on Gaza- which we should call the U.S./Israeli attack on Gaza- December 2008. It states correctly there had been a truce. It does not add that during the truce- which was really not observed by Israel- but during the truce, Hamas scrupulously observed it according to the Israeli government, not a single rocket was fired. That’s an omission. But then comes a straight line: it says that in December 2008, Hamas renewed rocket firing and therefore Israel had to attack in self-defense. Now, the ambassador surely is aware that there must be somebody in the American Embassy who reads the Israeli press- the mainstream Israeli press- in which case the embassy is surely aware that it is exactly the opposite: Hamas was calling for a renewal of the cease-fire. Israel considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to bomb rather than have security. Also omitted is that while Israel never observed the cease-fire- it maintained the siege in violation of the truce agreement- on November 4, the U.S. election 2008, the Israeli army invaded Gaza, killed half a dozen Hamas militants, which did lead to an exchange of fire in which all the casualties, as usual, were Palestinian. Then in December, Hamas- when the truce officially ended- Hamas called for renewing it. Israel refused, and the U.S. and Israel chose to launch the war. What the embassy reported is a gross falsification and a very significant one since- since it has to do the justification for the murderous attack- which means either the embassy hasn’t a clue to what is going on or else they’re lying outright.

AMY GOODMAN: And the latest report that just came out- from Oxfam, from Amnesty International, and other groups- about the effects of the siege on Gaza? What’s happening right now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: A siege is an act of war. If anyone insists on that, it is Israel. Israel launched two wars- '56 and ’67- in part on grounds its access to the outside world was very partially restricted. That very partial siege they considered an act of war and justification for- well, one of several justifications- for what they called "preventive"- or if you like, preemptive- war. So they understand that perfectly well and the point is correct. The siege is a criminal act, in the first place. The Security Council has called on Israel to lift it, and others have. It's designed to- as Israeli officials have have stated- to keep the people of Gaza to minimal level of existence. They do not want to kill them all off because that would not look good in international opinion. As they put it, "to keep them on a diet." This justification, this began very shortly after the official Israeli withdrawal. There was an election in January 2006 after the only free election in the Arab world- carefully monitored, recognized to be free- but it had a flaw. The wrong people won. Namely Hamas, which the U.S. did not want it and Israel did not want. Instantly, within days, the U.S. and Israel instituted harsh measures to punish the people of Gaza for voting the wrong way in a free election.

The next step was that they- the U.S. and Israel- sought to, along with the Palestinian Authority, try to carry out a military coup in Gaza to overthrow the elected government. This failed- Hamas beat back the coup attempt. That was July 2007. At that point, the siege got much harsher. In between come in many acts of violence, shellings, invasions and so on and so forth. But basically, Israel claims that when the truce was established in the summer 2008, Israel’s reason for not observing it and withdrawing the siege was that there was an Israeli soldier- Gilad Shalit- who was captured at the border. International commentary regards this as a terrible crime. Well, whatever you think about it, capturing a soldier of an attacking army- and the army was attacking Gaza- capturing a soldier of an attacking army isn’t anywhere near the level of the crime of kidnapping civilians. Just one day before the capture of Gilad Shalit at the border, Israeli troops had entered Gaza, kidnapped two civilians- the Muammar Brothers- and spirited them across the border. They’ve disappeared somewhere in Israel’s prison system, which is where hundreds, maybe a thousand or so people are sometimes there for years without charges. There are also secret prisons. We don’t know what happens there.

This alone is a far worse crime than the kidnapping of Shalit. In fact, you could argue there was a reason why was barely covered: Israel has been doing this for years, in fact, decades. Kidnapping, capturing people, hijacking ships, killing people, bringing them to Israel sometimes as hostages for many years. So this is regular practice; Israel can do what it likes. But the reaction here and the rest of the world of regarding the Shalit kidnapping- well, not kidnapping, you don’t kidnap soldiers- the capture of a soldier as an unspeakable crime, justification for maintaining and murders siege... that’s disgraceful.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, so you have Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children, and eighteen other aide groups calling on Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade of Gaza. And you have in the WikiLeaks release a U.S. diplomatic cable- provided to The Guardian by WikiLeaks- laying out, "National human intelligence collection directive: Asking U.S. personnel to obtain details of travel plans such as routes and vehicles used by Palestinian Authority leaders and Hamas members." The cable demands, "Biographical, financial, by metric information on key PA and Hamas leaders and representatives to include the Young Guard inside Gaza, the West Bank, and outside," it says.

NOAM CHOMSKY: That should not come as much of a surprise. Contrary to the image that is portrayed here, the United States is not an honest broker. It is a participant, a direct and crucial participant, in Israeli crimes, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. The attack in Gaza was a clear case in point: they used American weapons, the U.S. blocked cease-fire efforts, they gave diplomatic support. The same is true of the daily ongoing crimes in the West Bank, and we should not forget that. Actually, in Area C- the area of the West Bank that Israel controls- conditions for Palestinians have been reported by Save The Children to be worse than in Gaza. Again, this all takes place on the basis of crucial, decisive, U.S., military, diplomatic, economic support; and also ideological support- meaning, distorting the situation, as is done again dramatically in the cables.

The siege itself is simply criminal. It is not only blocking desperately needed aid from coming in, it also drives Palestinians away from the border. Gaza is a small place, heavily and densely overcrowded. And Israeli fire and attacks drive Palestinians away from the Arab land on the border, and also drive fisherman in from Gaza into territorial waters. They compelled by Israeli gunboats- all illegal, of course- to fish right near the shore where fishing is almost impossible because Israel has destroyed the power systems and sewage systems and the contamination is terrible. This is just a stranglehold to punish people for being there and for insisting on voting the wrong way. Israel decided, "We don’t want this anymore. Let’s just get rid of them."

We should also remember, the U.S./Israeli policy- since Oslo, since the early 1990’s- has been to separate Gaza from the West Bank. That is in straight violation of the Oslo agreements, but it has been carried out systematically, and it has a big effect. It means almost half the Palestinian population would be cut off from any possible political arrangement that would be made. It also means Palestine loses its access to the outside world- Gaza should have and can have airports and seaports. Right now, Israel has taken over about 40% of the West Bank. Obama’s latest offers have granted even more, and they’re certainly planning to take more. What is left is just canonized. It’s what the planner, Ariel Sharon called Bantustans. And they’re in prison, too, as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley and drives Palestinians out. So these are all crimes of a piece.

The Gaza siege is particularly grotesque because of the conditions under which people are forced to live. I mean, if a young person in Gaza- student in Gaza, let’s say- wants to study in a West Bank university, they can’t do it. If it a person in Gaza needs advanced medical training or treatment from an East Jerusalem hospital where the training is available, they can’t go! Medicines are held back. It is a scandalous crime, all around.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think the United States should do in this case?

NOAM CHOMSKY: What the United States should do is very simple: it should join the world. I mean, there are negotiations going on, supposedly. As they are presented here, the standard picture is that the U.S. is an honest broker trying to bring together two recalcitrant opponents- Israel and Palestinian Authority. That’s just a charade.

If there were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party and the U.S. and Israel would be on one side and the world would be on the other side. And that is not an exaggeration. It should not be a secret that there has long been an overwhelming international consensus on a diplomatic, political solution. Everyone knows the basic outlines; some of the details you can argue about. It includes everyone except the United States and Israel. The U.S. has been blocking it for 35 years with occasional departures- brief ones. It includes the Arab League. It includes the Organization of Islamic States. which happens to include Iran. It includes every relevant actor except the United States and Israel, the two rejectionist states. So if there were to be negotiations that were serious, that’s the way they would be organized. The actual negotiations barely reach the level of comedy. The issue that’s being debated is a footnote, a minor footnote: expansion of settlements. Of course it’s illegal. In fact, everything Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. That hasn’t even been controversial since 1967.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to come back to this in a minute. Noam Chomsky, author and institute professor emeritus at MIT, as we talk about WikiLeaks and the state of the world today.

[music break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident, author of more than 100 books, speaking to us from Boston. Noam, you wrote a piece after the midterm elections called Outrage Misguided. I want to read for you now what Sarah Palin tweeted – the former Alaskan governor, of course, and Republication vice presidential nominee. This is what she tweeted about WikiLeaks. Rather, she put it on Facebook. She said, “First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop WikiLeaks’ director Julian Assange from distributing this highly-sensitive classified material, especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a journalist any more than the editor of the Al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine “Inspire,” is a journalist. He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s pretty much what I would expect Sarah Palin to say. I don’t know how much she understands, but I think we should pay attention to what we learn from the leaks. What we learned, for example, is kinds of things I’ve said. Perhaps the most dramatic revelation, or mention, is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government – Hillary Clinton, others – and also by the diplomatic service.

To tell the world– well, they’re talking to each other- to pretend to each other that the Arab world regards Iran as the major threat and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran, is extremely revealing, when they know that approximately 80% of Arab opinion regards the U.S. and Israel as the major threat, 10% regard Iran as the major threat, and a majority, 57%, think the region would be better off with Iranian nuclear weapons as a kind of deterrent. That is does not even enter. All that enters is what they claim has been said by Arab dictators – brutal Arab dictators. That is what counts.

How representative this is of what they say, we don’t know, because we do not know what the filtering is. But that’s a minor point. But the major point is that the population is irrelevant. All that matters is the opinions of the dictators that we support. If they were to back us, that is the Arab world. That is a very revealing picture of the mentality of U.S. political leadership and, presumably, the lead opinion, judging by the commentary that’s appeared here, that’s the way it has been presented in the press as well. It does not matter with the Arabs believe.

AMY GOODMAN: Your piece, Outrage Misguided. Back to the midterm elections and what we’re going to see now. Can you talk about the tea party movement?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The Tea Party movement itself is, maybe 15% or 20% of the electorate. It’s relatively affluent, white, nativist, you know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what is much more important, I think, is the outrage. Over half the population says they more or less supported it, or support its message. What people are thinking is extremely interesting. I mean, overwhelmingly polls reveal that people are extremely bitter, angry, hostile, opposed to everything.

The primary cause undoubtedly is the economic disaster. It’s not just the financial catastrophe, it’s an economic disaster. I mean, in the manufacturing industry, for example, unemployment levels are at the level of the Great Depression. And unlike the Great Depression, those jobs are not coming back. U.S. owners and managers have long ago made the decision that they can make more profit with complicated financial deals than by production. So finance – this goes back to the 1970s, mainly Reagan escalated it, and onward- Clinton, too. The economy has been financialized.

Financial institutions have grown enormously in their share of corporate profits. It may be something like a third, or something like that today. At the same time, correspondingly, production has been exported. So you buy some electronic device from China. China is an assembly plant for a Northeast Asian production center. The parts and components come from the more advanced countries – and from the United States, and the technology . So yes, that’s a cheap place to assemble things and sell them back here. Rather similar in Mexico, now Vietnam, and so on. That is the way to make profits.

It destroys the society here, but that’s not the concern of the ownership class and the managerial class. Their concern is profit. That is what drives the economy. The rest of it is a fallout. People are extremely bitter about it, but don’t seem to understand it. So the same people who are a majority, who say that Wall Street is to blame for the current crisis, are voting Republican. Both parties are deep in the pockets of Wall Street, but the Republicans much more so than the Democrats.

The same is true on issue after issue. The antagonism to everyone is extremely high – actually antagonism – the population doesn’t like Democrats, but they hate Republicans even more. They’re against big business. They’re against government. They’re against Congress. They’re against science –

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we only have thirty seconds. I wanted ask if you were President Obama’s top adviser, what would you tell him to do right now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I would tell him to do what FDR did when big business was opposed to him. Help organize, stimulate public opposition and put through a serious populist program, which can be done. Stimulate the economy. Don’t give away everything to financiers. Push through real health reform. The health reform that was pushed through may be a slight improvement but it leaves some major problems untouched. If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it is almost all attributable to military spending and this totally dysfunctional health program.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Wikileaks Open

Here it is:
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org

cyber attack of wikileaks continues

Cyber attack on wikileaks — continues

1 Votes

So far, only a few foreign links work, the Czeck for one. German definitetly down, experts agree.
Publication in the newspapers noted below. These tweets are from Wikileaks.
wikileaks

El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down about 1 hour ago via web

wikileaks

We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack. about 1 hour ago via web
wikileaks

El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down about 1 hour ago via web

wikileaks

We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack. about 1 hour ago via web

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Wikileaks -- Extra

I'm not all that sure about this, but it seems that all governments have joined us in a cyber attacks on the Wikileaks node.

That is why the documents have not yet been released.

Yet.

Monday, October 25, 2010

The Wikileaks Story and Attacks on Democracy in Israel

Two items on Democracy. One from the Jewish voice for peace JVP.org and the other is a purpose statement from Wikileaks, the other force for a democratic world"

Association for Civil Rights in Israel on democracy’s heart attack (Long)

From the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, reprinted by permission.
Ed’s note: This is long, but close enough to our mission to warrant reprinting in full. Here you have the definite guide to anti-democracy bills in the Israeli Knesset, some that will be familiar to readers of this blog, some that even close followers of Israeli democracy will be unaware of. Did you know that the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) might consider banning face veils? Or that there was a bill to restrict the Israeli cinema? Or that Israel’s embattled political opposition faced further restrictions in one bill that passed its first reading? None of these bills have passed as of yet. But they offer a window into what the next outrage might be and clearly illustrate the steep downward trendlines of Israeli democracy. No doubt not all of these bills will become law, but each will do their part to send a message to Israel’s political and national minorities and oppressed groups about where things are headed. And exactly none of them will be mentioned next time an official Israeli film festival comes to town, or the next time an Israeli or American leader goes on about our shared democratic heritage.

Harming Democracy in the Heart of Democracy

News
A Position Paper Ahead of the Knesset’s Winter Session
Update:10/5/2010

by Attorney Debbie Gild-Hayo
October 2010
For links to the texts of all Knesset bills and document cited, please view the complete PDF version of this document.
Background
Over the past two years, we have been increasingly troubled by expanding tendencies to harm Israel’s democracy. These trends are extensively surveyed in the State of the Democracy Report – published by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in intermittent chapters. The two chapters that have been published so far deal with education system, and with the status of the Arab minority in Israel. The three future chapters will address the Knesset and the judicial system, free media, and freedom of protest and political activity.
A source of great concern is the fact that one of the key rings in which the Israeli democracy is threatened is the parliament itself – the very heart of democracy. Ahead of the upcoming opening of the Knesset’s Winter Session, we have drafted this brief review. It surveys the main aspects of anti-democratic trends in the Knesset, focusing on anti-democratic legislation, which includes bills that harm basic democratic rights – mainly the freedom of expression and political protest, and equality before the law; verbal and even physical abuse of members of the Knesset minority factions at this time;[1] attempts to delegitimize and infringe on the legitimate and much-needed operations of human-rights and social-change organizations;[2] and attempts to restrict the freedom of Israel’s academy. The above are most troubling signs, attesting to the deterioration of Israel’s democratic regime.
The attacks against Israel’s democracy are mainly characterized by attempts to silence social or political minorities’ views or public criticism; attempts to delegitimize political rivals, human-rights organizations, and minorities; attempts to restrict parties with positions or activities that do not coincide with the political majority’s desired direction; and by presenting minorities in the Israeli society as enemies of the State, generalizing in an attempt to infringe on their civil and political rights.
As a result, the basic principles of the Israeli democratic system are harmed; there is ongoing infringement on issues such as the freedom of expression, and human dignity and equality; on the possibility of upholding the pluralism of views and thoughts; on the freedom to congregate and protest; and on the legitimacy of certain views and stands. We are witnessing a reality of increasing tyranny against social, political, and national minorities, which harms their very rights.
It should be noted that these events have been taking place against the backdrop of a social and political reality which is always very loaded and often very harsh. Over the past 2 years, for example, we witnessed the continuation of the occupation and all that it entails: fire on Israel’s southern area, the military operation in Gaza, the flotilla affair, terror attacks, and more. We believe, however, that raising the banner of “A Self-Defending Democracy” is a cynical attempt to infringe on a democratic right of some minority (ethnic, social, or political) and is neither legitimate nor just. We believe that the State of Israel and its democracy must be defended, albeit proportionally and appropriately, and that basic rights may be denied or restricted only in the most extreme cases – as the Israeli law currently stipulates. It is inappropriate to legitimize the denial of minority rights as a matter of routine.
These anti-democratic moves employ various means, most troubling of which is the use of allegedly legitimate parliamentary tools, mainly through legislation. In recent years, we witnessed harsh and unprecedented remarks by senior politicians against political and human rights organizations, as well as various minorities, coupled by a variety of restrictive moves against them. At the same time, attempts were made to promote legislative initiatives and bills that clearly impair on the Israeli democracy and the rights, positions, and civil status of parties that did not belong to the political majority at the time.
It should be remembered that remarks and/or moves by senior members of the Israeli political establishment, particularly members of the Knesset, which has been a symbol of Israel’s democracy and its main upholder, have far-reaching implications on the Israeli public stands and attitudes toward democracy, human rights, and political, social, and ethnic minority groups. Surveys that the media carried over the past two years indicate that the Israeli public, mainly Israeli youths, support undemocratic and racist views.
Ahead of the Knesset’s October 2010 Winter Session
The 18th Knesset’s Winter Session 2010-11 will commence on October 10th. Anticipating it, we wish to warn against the troubling trend of infringement against democracy in Israel as expressed through the persistent promotion of anti-democratic bills, decisionmaking process, and conduct by Members of Knesset (MK). The Knesset plenum and committees have recently served as platforms for offensive and anti-democratic discourse.
In July 2010, at the close of the last Knesset Summer Session, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) sent a letter to the prime minister and the Knesset speaker in which we warned about the troubling trend of infringement on democracy, pointing at the important role the Knesset plays in defending democracy, and calling on them to take steps to end that trend.[3]
In the letter, we presented a list of bills promoted in the Knesset to demonstrate this troubling trend. At this time, ahead of the opening of the Winter Session, we wish to offer an update on these bills, some of which were not promoted while others were.
First, we wish to address bills that were listed in the aforementioned letter, and new bills that were submitted since and were not promoted because the Ministerial Legislation Committee rejected them, probably due to lack of agreement among its members (additionally, we list a bill that was passed and thus, naturally, will not be discussed in the upcoming Knesset session).
1. Bill on MK’s Pledge of Allegiance (David Rotem)
According to this bill, all MKs are required to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel as Jewish a democratic state, to its laws, symbols, and national anthem. The bill intends to delegitimize and even practically prevent minority groups from partaking in the Israeli democratic process.
Status: Not promoted due to lack of coalition agreement.
2. Bill Denying the High Court’s Right to Rule on Nationalization (Rotem and another 44 MKs)
This bill, which intends to bypass the High Court of Justice (HCJ), was devised in the wake of HCJ discussions of the Nationalization Act, though the court has not yet ruled against it, but probably may do so in the future.
Status: Not promoted due to lack of coalition agreement.
3. Bill for the Establishment of a Constitution Court (David Rotem)
This bill wishes to restrict the Supreme Court. In a democracy, the separation of powers means that the court must defend the rule of the law and prevent harm to human rights in general and to constitutional rights in particular through legislation, among other things. The proposed bill, which aims at denying the HCJ powers through a series of acts, severely harms the principle of the separation of powers, the protection of human rights, and the democratic system.
Status: Not promoted
4. A series of government-initiated bills that intend to restrict the Knesset’s opposition factions
Seven MKs may split from a Knesset faction to establish a new faction – not one-third of the original faction members; increasing the quorum needed for budget-related bills to 55 MKs; if after a vote of no-confidence is endorsed by a Knesset majority, the new candidate for prime minister should fail to form a coalition-based government, the ousted government should regain its seat; a cabinet member who quits the Knesset shall be replaced by another on his faction list.
Status: passed the first reading; it seems there is no intention to promote further it at this time.
5. Bill or Pardoning Disengagement Offenders (Rivlin et al)
Though legislation that eases punitive measures against persons who exercised their right to political protest is welcome in principle, this particular bill is problematic because it makes a distinction between political and ideological activists of various groups. Instead of promoting a general principles of “going easy” on protesters, this bill was promoted by the current political majority in favor of their electorate alone .[4]
Status: the Knesset passed the bill; the HCJ is currently reading a petition against its inequality.
6. The Cinema bill
According to this bill, the entire crew of a film that seeks public funding will have to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel as Jewish a democratic state, its laws, symbols, etc. This bill infringes on the freedom of expression, protest, and artistic and creative expression – referring only to a specific political, national, and social group.
Status: not promoted.
7. Bill on Denying an MK’s Parliamentary Status (Dani Danon)
According to this bill, the parliamentary status of an MK may be revoked by a majority of 80 MKs if he expressed his opposition Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, incited to racism, or supported an armed struggle against the State of Israel.
Status: Not approved by the government.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
It may be expected, however, that some of the bills that the Knesset started promoting in the previous session will be actively promoted further in the upcoming session. Following is a list of bills that we believe carry high probability of promotion and even ratification, with such or other wording, and turn into state laws in the coming Winter Session.
1. The Nakba Bill (Alex Miller)
According to this bill, persons marking Nakba Day as a day of mourning for the establishment of the State of Israel will be sentenced to prison. The government endorsed the bill but, in the wake of public protests, its wording was changed to state that persons marking Nakba Day shall be denied public funds. Even this “minimized” version still legally impairs on the freedom of expression, as the political majority bans a certain political view.
Status: The bill passed the first reading and will be discussed by the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee ahead of its second and third reading.
2. Anti-Incitement Bill (Zvulun Orlev)
An amendment of the existing act, according to which persons publishing a call that denies the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state shall be arrested. This is an extension of the penal code, which intends to incriminate a political view that another political group does not accept.
Status: Passed the preliminary reading and may be discussed by the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee ahead of its first reading.
3. Nationalization, Pledge of Allegiance (David Rotem)
According to this bill, all Israeli citizens will have to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel as Jewish a democratic state, and do a term of military or national service.
Status: The government did not endorse this bill; a ministerial committee rejected it in May 2010, but another attempt was made in July to get the cabinet to endorse it and failed. Additional attempts to promote this bill may be expected.
4. Bill on Admission Committees of Communal Settlements (David Rotem, Israel Hason, Shay Hermesh)
According to this bill, admission committees may turn down candidates for membership with a communal settlement if they “fail to meet the fundamental views of the settlement,” its social fabric, and so on. The bill primarily intends to deny ethnic minorities’ access to Jewish settlements, offering the possibility to reject anyone who does not concur with the settlement committee’s positions, religion, political views, and so on. It should be noted that ACRI filed petition against this bill, which is pending with the HCJ. [5]
Status: The bill passed the first reading and will be discussed by the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee ahead of its second and third reading.
5. Bill on Funds from Foreign Political Entities (Elkin et al)
According to the (original version) of this bill, any person or group financed by a foreign nation must register with the party registrar and immediately report each contribution, mark every document in this spirit, and state at the opening of any remark they make that they are funded by a foreign state. The bill names strict penalties too. In practice, the bill intends to delegitimize and impair on the activities of organizations that receive funds from, among other sources, foreign states. Though the Israeli law already makes reporting such donations imperative, this bill wishes to expand the existing law and force certain civil organizations to mark their activities as subversive and illegitimate. Furthermore, the bill practically refers to the activities of specific civil groups, focusing on human rights organizations, implicitly incriminating them when compared with other bodies or individuals funded by foreign non-state entities.[6] It should be noted that we sent a letter to the foreign minister recently warning against the state’s illegitimate intervention in fundraising by Israel’s civil organizations.[7]
Status: An amended version of the bill was endorsed by the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee; and will soon be presented for a first reading and then discussed by the committee ahead of its second and third reading.
6. Bill on Infiltration (Government)
The bill stipulates, among other things, that infiltrators based on their country of origin, and persons who assist them (!) may be sentenced to 5 to 7 years in prison. This bill follows the trend of delegitimizing human rights and aid organizations and individuals who help refugees and labor immigrants.
Status: The government pulled back the bill, but key points from it will be introduced through a new bill which, to the best of our knowledge, is currently drafted by the Justice Ministry.[8]
7. Bill Against Boycott (Elkin et al)
According to this bill, persons who initiate, promote, or publish material that might serve as grounds for imposing a boycott against Israel are committing a crime and a civil wrong, and may be ordered to compensate parties economically affected by that boycott, including fixed reparations to the tune of 30,000 shekels, freeing the plaintiffs from the need to prove damages. If the felon is a foreign citizen, he may be banned from entering or doing business with Israel; and if it is a foreign state, Israel may not repay the debts it owes that state, and use the money to compensate offended parties; that state may additionally be banned from conducting business affairs in Israel. And if that is not enough, the above shall apply one year retroactively.
This too is a bill that discriminates against certain political groups in Israel, and is introduced by the political majority in an attempt to neutralize the political opposition it is facing. Primarily, the bill intends to reject legitimate boycotts of products of settlements, and thus severely impairs on a legitimate, legal, and nonviolent protest tool that is internationally accepted (including by Israel), while impairing on the Israeli citizens’ freedom of expression, protest, and congregation.[9]
Status: The bill passed a preliminary reading and the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee will discuss it ahead of its first reading. It should be noted that a ministerial committee rejected the chapters pertaining to foreign citizens and states, probably out of consideration for Israel’s foreign relations, and spiked the retroactive clause.
8. Bill on Revoking the Citizenship of Persons Convicted of Terrorism or Espionage (David Rotem)
This bill infringes on the basic rights of Israel’s citizens because when a citizenship (which in itself is a basic right) is denied, a series of basic rights that follow from it are denied too. Furthermore, the Israeli Penal Code already specifies ways of dealing with persons convicted of terrorism or espionage.[10]
Status: The bill was discussed by the Knesset Interior Committee, which will continue discussing it ahead of its first reading.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
On top of these, two additional bills submitted over the past 2 months may be promoted in the coming session:
1. An Associations Bill (ban on filing suits abroad against Israeli politicians or army officers), according to which an association that deals with suits against senior Israeli officials abroad may not be established, or will be shut down.
2. Bill banning wearing veils in public, according to which, it would be illegal to cover one’s face in any public location, under penalty of imprisonment.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
We further wish to stress that there is a tough and intolerant approach toward minority members and stands in the Knesset, as expressed in plenum and committees’ discussions. This trend was particularly visible after the flotilla affair, and included verbal and even physical abuse against MK Zuabi, as well as other Arab MKs, during and after the plenum discussion, when the Knesset discussed the revocation of her parliamentary rights. It should be noted that a petition was filed with the HCJ against that revocation, under the pretext that it was an undemocratic act.
The prevailing atmosphere is not expected to change soon, certainly not during the current loaded period of talks with the Palestinians, terror attacks, rocket firing from Gaza, and the debate over freezing or not freezing construction works in the territories.
Answering our letter, dated July 2010, the Knesset speaker wrote that he too is uncomfortable with some of the bills mentioned in our letter, saying that he feel that “the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish nation, and as a Jewish and democratic state, is strong enough and needs no ‘fortifications’ such as those proposed by the bills you mentioned in your letter. I believe that, often unintentionally, they actually weaken and not bolster it.”[11]
Additional Issues on the Knesset Agenda Ahead of the October 2010 Session
While dealing with anti-democratic laws, we constantly work against legislation that impairs on human rights in all aspects of life.
At this time, we deem it particularly important to address two topical and central issues that carry human-rights implications that the Knesset will discuss in the upcoming session:
The Planning and Housing Reform – A new planning and construction law is about to be introduced that has far-reaching implications that might impact on all aspects of the Israeli residents’ lives. We believe that the currently proposed reform might impair on the public’s participation in related forums and on the protection of public interests. Cooperating with other organizations, we work to amend and correct the suggested reform so as to introduce tools that would ensure appropriate representation, the implementation of the public’s participation, and that various social interests are considered.
The State Budget and the Arrangements Act – Israel’s biannual budget for 2011-12 will be discussed and sealed in the coming months. We feel that the suggested budget contains numerous resolutions and amendments that impair on human rights in a wide range of issues. On behalf of ACRI and in collaboration with additional organizations, we drafted several position papers on issues such as – impairing on the courts’ accessibility; impairing on the rights of the unemployed and seekers of state allowances; harming the laborers’ rights; infringing on the residential rights of inhabitants of public housing, and so on.
Below are a few additional issues (samples only) that we handle and which are expected to be raised in the upcoming Knesset session:
1. A long line of bills dealing with immigration and civil status is expected to be discussed as part of the Arrangements Act, government deliberations ahead of the forming act, the new anti-infiltration bill, and more.
2. An amendment we initiated, banning discrimination in public services that will not allow further selection at club entrances, will be discussed by the Knesset Economic Committee in preparation for a second and third reading.
3. An amendment of the National Health Act, adding a standing mechanism for updating the medications basket that will ratify continuity, which we initiated together with the Knesset Labor Committee, will be discussed soon, having passed the first reading in the previous Knesset.
4. A bill we initiated offering a program to replace the Wisconsin Program, which the Knesset Labor Committee will discuss.
Summary
Anti-democratic tendencies in the Knesset are gaining momentum and, regrettably, the Winter Session is expected to follow on the last session’s trends. We feel, however, that it is important to point out that not all the anti-democratic bills were promoted, and that some of those that were promoted have undergone significant changes that minimized the damage they might cause. The last Knesset session stood out in laying the foundations for anti-democratic legislation, but the vast majority of the legislation processes concerning the aforementioned bills is not yet over. In this respect, the coming session will be a trying time. If the said bills should ripen and turn into state laws, their potential damage to democracy would be realized; but should the Knesset sober up and restrain itself, protecting our democracy against the tyranny of the majority, the Israeli parliament will pass the important test of the democracy’s durability.
Even if the anti-democratic bills – some, or even all, of them – do not eventually become laws – even then, Israeli democracy will have already sustained a serious blow. For the issue has yet another, public and educational, lasting aspect. The winds blowing from the Knesset, through these legislative efforts, are already affecting the public, helping to create a public perception of Israeli Arabs as always suspect, of human rights activists and organizations as enemies of the State, and of basic democratic norms as subject to the majority’s whims. Thus, the activities of many MKs, often supported by leading cabinet members, effectively provide the public with ongoing classes in anti-democracy.
In conclusion, we would like to cite remarks that the Knesset speaker made on 2 August 2010, addressing Foreign Ministry cadets, as published in Haaretz: “Certain MKs address the people’s sentiments, and in doing so create an international image of Israel as an Apartheid state…. [Such MKs] create a wrongful discourse between Jews and Arabs in the Knesset that reflects on the existing conflict in the Israeli society.”[12]
We hope that in the upcoming session, the MKs will sober up and change the parliament’s direction, and that the trends of tyranny of the majority will be replaced by new approaches that will restore essential democratic values and reintroduce the need to protect them into the heart of our democracy. Either way – whether the Knesset mends its ways or not – ACRI will keep guarding democratic values, monitoring the Knesset’s legislative processes, and doing everything it can to help promoting the values of equality, social justice, and human rights.

[1] See our letter to the Knesset speaker, dated 6 June 2010, following the flotilla events, and his reply dated 10 June 2010.

[2] See our letter to the President, the prime minister, and the Knesset speaker, dated 31 January 2010, concerning the delegitimization of human rights organizations.

[3] See our letter dated 21 July 2010

[4] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 25 June 2010.

[5] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 21 December 2009.

[6] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 9 August 2010.

[7] See an ACRI letter to the foreign minister, dated 1 September 2010.

[8] See an ACRI position paper by the Refugees’ Rights Forum on the issue dated 4 June 2008.

[9] See a position paper on the issue dated 7 September 2010.

[10] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 4 July 2010.

[11] See the Knesset Speaker’s letter dated 3 August 2010.

[12] http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1182847.html. Read the English translation of the article here.

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About Wikileaks

Submissions

1. Introduction to WikiLeaks

"Could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." - Time Magazine

1.1 About WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organisation that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe. Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities.
WikiLeaks has sustained and triumphed against legal and political attacks designed to silence our publishing organisation, our journalists and our anonymous sources. The broader principles on which our work is based are the defence of freedom of speech and media publishing, the improvement of our common historical record and the support of the rights of all people to create new history. We derive these principles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, Article 19 inspires the work of our journalists and other volunteers. It states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. We agree, and we seek to uphold this and the other Articles of the Declaration.

1.2 How WikiLeaks works

WikiLeaks has combined high-end security technologies with journalism and ethical principles. Like other media outlets conducting investigative journalism, we accept (but do not solicit) anonymous sources of information. Unlike other outlets, we provide a high security anonymous drop box fortified by cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies. This provides maximum protection to our sources. We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the public. When information comes in, our journalists analyse the material, verify it and write a news piece about it describing its significance to society. We then publish both the news story and the original material in order to enable readers to analyse the story in the context of the original source material themselves. Our news stories are in the comfortable presentation style of Wikipedia, although the two organisations are not otherwise related. Unlike Wikipedia, random readers can not edit our source documents.
As the media organisation has grown and developed, WikiLeaks been developing and improving a harm minimisation procedure. We do not censor our news, but from time to time we may remove or significantly delay the publication of some identifying details from original documents to protect life and limb of innocent people.
We accept leaked material in person and via postal drops as alternative methods, although we recommend the anonymous electronic drop box as the preferred method of submitting any material. We do not ask for material, but we make sure that if material is going to be submitted it is done securely and that the source is well protected. Because we receive so much information, and we have limited resources, it may take time to review a source's submission.
We also have a network of talented lawyers around the globe who are personally committed to the principles that WikiLeaks is based on, and who defend our media organisation.

1.3 Why the media (and particularly Wiki leaks) is important

Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society's institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. A healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in achieving these goals. We are part of that media.
Scrutiny requires information. Historically, information has been costly in terms of human life, human rights and economics. As a result of technical advances particularly the internet and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered. In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.
We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their own government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government through the media.
In the years leading up to the founding of WikiLeaks, we observed the world's publishing media becoming less independent and far less willing to ask the hard questions of government, corporations and other institutions. We believed this needed to change.
WikiLeaks has provided a new model of journalism. Because we are not motivated by making a profit, we work cooperatively with other publishing and media organisations around the globe, instead of following the traditional model of competing with other media. We don't hoard our information; we make the original documents available with our news stories. Readers can verify the truth of what we have reported themselves. Like a wire service, WikiLeaks reports stories that are often picked up by other media outlets. We encourage this. We believe the world's media should work together as much as possible to bring stories to a broad international readership.

1.4 How WikiLeaks verifies its news stories

We assess all news stories and test their veracity. We send a submitted document through a very detailed examination a procedure. Is it real? What elements prove it is real? Who would have the motive to fake such a document and why? We use traditional investigative journalism techniques as well as more modern rtechnology-based methods. Typically we will do a forensic analysis of the document, determine the cost of forgery, means, motive, opportunity, the claims of the apparent authoring organisation, and answer a set of other detailed questions about the document. We may also seek external verification of the document For example, for our release of the Collateral Murder video, we sent a team of journalists to Iraq to interview the victims and observers of the helicopter attack. The team obtained copies of hospital records, death certificates, eye witness statements and other corroborating evidence supporting the truth of the story. Our verification process does not mean we will never make a mistake, but so far our method has meant that WikiLeaks has correctly identified the veracity of every document it has published.
Publishing the original source material behind each of our stories is the way in which we show the public that our story is authentic. Readers don't have to take our word for it; they can see for themselves. In this way, we also support the work of other journalism organisations, for they can view and use the original documents freely as well. Other journalists may well see an angle or detail in the document that we were not aware of in the first instance. By making the documents freely available, we hope to expand analysis and comment by all the media. Most of all, we want readers know the truth so they can make up their own minds.

1.5 The people behind WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is a project of the Sunshine Press. It's probably pretty clear by now that WikiLeaks is not a front for any intelligence agency or government despite a rumour to that effect. This rumour was started early in WikiLeaks' existence, possibly by the intelligence agencies themselves. WikiLeaks is an independent global group of people with a long standing dedication to the idea of a free press and the improved transparency in society that comes from this. The group includes accredited journalists, software programmers, network engineers, mathematicians and others.
To determine the truth of our statements on this, simply look at the evidence. By definition, intelligence agencies want to hoard information. By contrast, WikiLeaks has shown that it wants to do just the opposite. Our track record shows we go to great lengths to bring the truth to the world without fear or favour.
The great American president Thomas Jefferson once observed that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We believe the journalistic media plays a key role in this vigilance.

1.6 Anonymity for sources

As far as we can ascertain, WikiLeaks has never revealed any of its sources. We can not provide details about the security of our media organisation or its anonymous drop box for sources because to do so would help those who would like to compromise the security of our organisation and its sources. What we can say is that we operate a number of servers across multiple international jurisdictions and we we do not keep logs. Hence these logs can not be seized. Anonymization occurs early in the WikiLeaks network, long before information passes to our web servers. Without specialized global internet traffic analysis, multiple parts of our organisation must conspire with each other to strip submitters of their anonymity.
However, we also provide instructions on how to submit material to us, via net cafes, wireless hot spots and even the post so that even if WikiLeaks is infiltrated by an external agency, sources can still not be traced. Because sources who are of substantial political or intelligence interest may have their computers bugged or their homes fitted with hidden video cameras, we suggest that if sources are going to send WikiLeaks something very sensitive, they do so away from the home and work.
A number of governments block access to any address with WikiLeaks in the name. There are ways around this. WikiLeaks has many cover domains, such as https://destiny.mooo.com, that don't have the organisation in the name. It is possible to write to us or ask around for other cover domain addresses. Please make sure the cryptographic certificate says wikileaks.org .

2. WikiLeaks' journalism record

2.1 Prizes and background

WikiLeaks is the winner of:

the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award
the 2009 Amnesty International human rights reporting award (New Media)

WikiLeaks has a history breaking major stories in major media outlets and robustly protecting sources and press freedoms. We have never revealed a source. We do not censor material. Since formation in 2007, WikiLeaks has been victorious over every legal (and illegal) attack, including those from the Pentagon, the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the Former president of Kenya, the Premier of Bermuda, Scientology, the Catholic & Mormon Church, the largest Swiss private bank, and Russian companies. WikiLeaks has released more classified intelligence documents than the rest of the world press combined.

2.2 Some of the stories we have broken

War, killings, torture and detention
Government, trade and corporate transparency
Suppression of free speech and a free press
Diplomacy, spying and (counter-)intelligence
Ecology, climate, nature and sciences
Corruption, finance, taxes, trading
Censorship technology and internet filtering
Cults and other religious organizations
Abuse, violence, violation

War, killings, torture and detention

Changes in Guantanamo Bay SOP manual (2003-2004) - Guantanamo Bay's main operations manuals
Of Orwell, Wikipedia and Guantanamo Bay - In where we track down and expose Guantanamo Bay's propaganda team
Fallujah jail challenges US - Classified U.S. report into appalling prison conditions in Fallujah
U.S lost Fallujah's info war - Classified U.S. intelligence report on the battle of Fallujah, Iraq
US Military Equipment in Iraq (2007) - Entire unit by unit equipment list of the U.S army in Iraq
Dili investigator called to Canberra as evidence of execution mounts - the Feb 2008 killing of East Timor rebel leader Reinado
Como entrenar a escuadrones de la muerte y aplastar revoluciones de El Salvador a Iraq - The U.S. Special Forces manual on how to prop up unpopular government with paramilitaries

Government, trade and corporate transparency

Change you can download: a billion in secret Congressional reports - Publication of more than 6500 Congressional Research Reports, worth more than a billion dollars of US tax-funded research, long sought after by NGOs, academics and researchers
ACTA trade agreement negotiation lacks transparency - The secret ACTA trade agreement draft, followed by dozens of other publications, presenting the initial leak for the whole ACTA debate happening today
Toll Collect Vertraege, 2002 - Publication of around 10.000 pages of a secret contract between the German federal government and the Toll Collect consortium, a private operator group for heavy vehicle tolling system
Leaked documents suggest European CAP reform just a whitewash - European farm reform exposed
Stasi still in charge of Stasi files - Suppressed 2007 investigation into infiltration of former Stasi into the Stasi files commission
IGES Schlussbericht Private Krankenversicherung, 25 Jan 2010 - Hidden report on the economics of the German private health insurance system and its rentability

Suppression of free speech and a free press

The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009 - Publication of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored from the Independent's website. WikiLeaks has saved dozens of articles, radio and tv recordings from disappearing after having been censored from BBC, Guardian, and other major news organisations archives.
Secret gag on UK Times preventing publication of Minton report into toxic waste dumping, 16 Sep 2009 - Publication of variations of a so-called super-injunction, one of many gag-orders published by WikiLeaks to expose successful attempts to suppress the free press via repressive legal attacks
Media suppression order over Turks and Caicos Islands Commission of Inquiry corruption report, 20 Jul 2009 - Exposure of a press gagging order from the Turks and Caicos Islands, related to WikiLeaks exposure of the Commission of Inquiry corruption report
Bermuda's Premier Brown and the BCC bankdraft - Brown went to the Privy council London to censor the press in Bermuda
How German intelligence infiltrated Focus magazine - Illegal spying on German journalists

Diplomacy, spying and (counter-)intelligence

U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks, 18 Mar 2008 - Classified (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. Has been in the worldwide news.
CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11 Mar 2010 - This classified CIA analysis from March, outlines possible PR-strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. Received international news coverage in print, radio and TV.
U.S. Embassy profiles on Icelandic PM, Foreign Minister, Ambassador - Publication of personal profiles for briefing documents for U.S. officials visiting Iceland. While lowly classified are interesting for subtle tone and internal facts.
Cross-border clashes from Iraq O.K. - Classified documents reveal destabalizing U.S. military rules
Tehran Warns US Forces against Chasing Suspects into Iran - Iran warns the United States over classified document on WikiLeaks
Inside Somalia and the Union of Islamic Courts - Vital strategy documents in the Somali war and a play for Chinese support

Ecology, climate, nature and sciences

Draft Copenhagen climate change agreement, 8 Dec 2009 - Confidential draft "circle of commitment" (rich-country) Copenhagen climate change agreement
Draft Copenhagen Accord Dec 18, 2009 - Three page draft Copehagen "accord", from around Friday 7pm, Dec 18, 2009; includes pen-markings
Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009 - Over 60MB of emails, documents, code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, written between 1996 and 2009 that lead to a worldwide debate
The Monju nuclear reactor leak - Three suppressed videos from Japan's fast breeder reactor Monju revealing the true extent of the 1995 sodium coolant disaster

Corruption, finance, taxes, trading

The looting of Kenya under President Moi - $3,000,000,000 presidential corruption exposed; swung the Dec 2007 Kenyan election, long document, be patient
Gusmao's $15m rice deal alarms UN - Rice deal corruption in East Timor
How election violence was financed - the embargoed Kenyan Human Rights Commission report into the Jan 2008 killings of over 1,300 Kenyans
Financial collapse: Confidential exposure analysis of 205 companies each owing above EUR45M to Icelandic bank Kaupthing, 26 Sep 2008 - Publication of a confidential report that has lead to hundreds of newspaper articles worldwide
Barclays Bank gags Guardian over leaked memos detailing offshore tax scam, 16 Mar 2009 - Publication of censored documents revealing a number of elaborate international tax avoidance schemes by the SCM (Structured Capital Markets) division of Barclays
Bank Julius Baer: Grand Larceny via Grand Cayman - How the largest private Swiss bank avoids paying tax to the Swiss government
Der Fall Moonstone Trust - Cayman Islands Swiss bank trust exposed
Over 40 billion euro in 28167 claims made against the Kaupthing Bank, 23 Jan 2010 - List of Kaupthing claimants after Icelandic banking crash
Northern Rock vs. WikiLeaks - Northern Rock Bank UK failed legal injunctions over the ¡Ì24,000,000,000 collapse
Whistleblower exposes insider trading program at JP Morgan - Legal insider trading in three easy steps, brought to you by JP Morgan and the SEC

Censorship technology and internet filtering

Eutelsat suppresses independent Chinese-language TV station NTDTV to satisfy Beijing - French sat provider Eutelsat covertly removed an anti-communist TV channel to satisfy Beijing
Internet Censorship in Thailand - The secret internet censorship lists of Thailand's military junta

Cults and other religious organizations

Church of Scientology's 'Operating Thetan' documents leaked online - Scientology's secret, and highly litigated bibles
Censored Legion de Cristo and Regnum Cristi document collection - Censored internal documents from the Catholic sect Legion de Cristo (Legion of Christ)
US Department of Labor investigation into Landmark Education, 2006 - 2006 investigative report by the U.S. Department of Labor on Landmark Education

Abuse, violence, violation

Report on Shriners raises question of wrongdoing - corruption exposed at 22 U.S. and Canadian children's hospitals.
Claims of molestation resurface for US judo official
Texas Catholic hospitals did not follow Catholic ethics, report claims - Catholic hospitals violated catholic ethics

3. Short essays on how a more inquiring media can make a difference in the world

3.1 The Malaria Case Study: the antidote is good governance born from a strong media

Malaria is a case study in why good governance not just good science is the solution to so much human suffering. This year, the mosquito borne disease will kill over one million people. More than 80% of these will be children. Great Britain used to have malaria. In North America, malaria was epidemic and there are still a handful of infections each year. In Africa malaria kills over 100 people per hour. In Russia, amidst the corruption of the 1990s, malaria re-established itself. What is the difference between these cases?
Why does Malaria kill so many people in one place but barely take hold in another? Why has malaria been allowed to gain a foothold in places like Russia where it was previously eradicated? We know how to prevent malaria epidemics. The science is universal. The difference is good governance.
Put another way, unresponsive or corrupt government, through malaria alone, causes a children's "9/11" every day. [1]
It is only when the people know the true plans and behaviour of their governments that they can meaningfully choose to support or reject them. Historically, the most resilient forms of open government are those where publication and revelation are protected. Where that protection does not exist, it is our mission to provide it through an energetic and watchful media.
In Kenya, malaria was estimated to cause 20% of all deaths in children under five. Before the Dec 2007 national elections, WikiLeaks exposed $3 billion of Kenyan corruption, which swung the vote by 10%. This led to changes in the constitution and the establishment of a more open government. It is too soon to know if it will contribute to a change in the human cost of malaria in Kenya but in the long term we believe it may. It is one of many reforms catalyzed by WikiLeaks unvarnished reporting.
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3.2 The importance of principled leaking to journalism, good government and a healthy society

Principled leaking has changed the course of history for the better. It can alter the course of history in the present, and it can lead us to a better future.
Consider Daniel Ellsberg, working within the US government during the Vietnam War. He comes into contact with the Pentagon Papers, a meticulously kept record of military and strategic planning throughout the war. Those papers reveal the depths to which the US government has sunk in deceiving the American people about the war. Yet the public and the media know nothing of this urgent and shocking information. Indeed, secrecy laws are being used to keep the public ignorant of gross dishonesty practised by their own government. In spite of those secrecy laws and at great personal risk, Ellsberg manages to disseminate the Pentagon papers to journalists and to the world. Despite criminal charges against Ellsberg, eventually dropped, the release of the Pentagon Papers shocks the world, exposes the government lying and helps to shorten the war and save thousands of both American and Vietnamese lives.
The power of principled leaking to call governments, corporations and institutions to account is amply demonstrated through recent history. The public scrutiny of otherwise unaccountable and secretive institutions forces them to consider the ethical implications of their actions. Which official will chance a secret, corrupt transaction when the public is likely to find out? What repressive plan will be carried out when it is revealed to the citizenry, not just of its own country, but the world? When the risks of embarrassment and discovery increase, the tables are turned against conspiracy, corruption, exploitation and oppression. Open government answers injustice rather than causing it. Open government exposes and undoes corruption. Open governance is the most effective method of promoting good governance.
Today, with authoritarian governments in power in much of the world, increasing authoritarian tendencies in democratic governments, and increasing amounts of power vested in unaccountable corporations, the need for openness and transparency is greater than ever. WikiLeaks interest is the revelation of the truth. Unlike the covert activities of state intelligence agencies, as a media publisher WikiLeaks relies upon the power of overt fact to enable and empower citizens to bring feared and corrupt governments and corporations to justice.
With its anonymous drop box, WikiLeaks provides an avenue for every government official, every bureaucrat, and every corporate worker, who becomes privy to damning information that their institution wants to hide but the public needs to know. What conscience cannot contain, and institutional secrecy unjustly conceals, WikiLeaks can broadcast to the world. It is telling that a number of government agencies in different countries (and indeed some entire countries) have tried to ban access to WikiLeaks. This is of course a silly response, akin to the ostrich burying its head in the sand. A far better response would be to behave in more ethical ways.
Authoritarian governments, oppressive institutions and corrupt corporations should be subject to the pressure, not merely of international diplomacy, freedom of information laws or even periodic elections, but of something far stronger - the consciences of the people within them.

3.3 Should the press really be free?

In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.
The ruling stated that "paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
It is easy to perceive the connection between publication and the complaints people make about publication. But this generates a perception bias, because it overlooks the vastness of the invisible. It overlooks the unintended consequences of failing to publish and it overlooks all those who are emancipated by a climate of free speech. Such a climate is a motivating force for governments and corporations to act justly. If acting in a just manner is easier than acting in an unjust manner, most actions will be just.
Sufficient principled leaking in tandem with fearless reporting will bring down administrations that rely on concealing reality from their own citizens.
It is increasingly obvious that corporate fraud must be effectively addressed. In the US, employees account for most revelations of fraud, followed by industry regulators, media, auditors and, finally, the SEC. Whistleblowers account for around half of all exposures of fraud.
Corporate corruption comes in many forms. The number of employees and turnover of some corporations exceeds the population and GDP of some nation states. When comparing countries, after observations of population size and GDP, it is usual to compare the system of government, the major power groupings and the civic freedoms available to their populations. Such comparisons can also be illuminating in the case of corporations.
Considering the largest corporations as analogous to a nation state reveals the following properties:

The right to vote does not exist except for share holders (analogous to land owners) and even there voting power is in proportion to ownership.
All power issues from a central committee.
There is no balancing division of power. There is no fourth estate. There are no juries and innocence is not presumed.
Failure to submit to any order may result in instant exile.
There is no freedom of speech.
There is no right of association. Even romance between men and women is often forbidden without approval.
The economy is centrally planned.
There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.
The society is heavily regulated, to the degree many employees are told when, where and how many times a day they can go to the toilet.
There is little transparency and something like the Freedom of Information Act is unimaginable.
Internal opposition groups, such as unions, are blackbanned, surveilled and/or marginalized whenever and wherever possible.

While having a GDP and population comparable to Belgium, Denmark or New Zealand, many of these multi-national corporations have nothing like their quality of civic freedoms and protections. This is even more striking when the regional civic laws the company operates under are weak (such as in West Papua, many African states or even South Korea); there, the character of these corporate tyrannies is unregulated by their civilizing surroundings.
Through governmental corruption, political influence, or manipulation of the judicial system, abusive corporations are able to gain control over the defining element of government the sole right to deploy coercive force.
Just like a country, a corrupt or unethical corporation is a menace to all inside and outside it. Corporations will behave more ethically if the world is watching closely. WikiLeaks has exposed unethical plans and behaviour in corporations and this as resulted in recompense or other forms of justice forms of justice for victims.

3.4 Could oppressive regimes potentially come to face legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks?

The laws and immunities that are applied in national and international courts, committees and other legal institutions vary, and we can't comment on them in particular. The probative value of documents posted on WikiLeaks in a court of law is a question for courts to decide.
While a secure chain of custody cannot be established for anonymous leaks, these leaks can lead to successful court cases. In many cases, it is easier for journalists or investigators to confirm the existence of a known document through official channels (such as an FOI law or legal discovery) than it is to find this information when starting from nothing. Having the title, author or relevant page numbers of an important document can accelerate an investigation, even if the content itself has not been confirmed. In this way, even unverified information is an enabling jump-off point for media, civil society or official investigations. Principled leaking has been shown to contribute to bringing justice to victims via the court system.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

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More Recent Articles

Iraq War Logs

1. Introduction to WikiLeaks

1.1 About WikiLeaks

1.2 How WikiLeaks works

1.3 Why the media (and particularly Wiki leaks) is important

1.4 How WikiLeaks verifies its news stories

1.5 The people behind WikiLeaks

1.6 Anonymity for sources

2. WikiLeaks' journalism record

2.1 Prizes and background

2.2 Some of the stories we have broken

War, killings, torture and detention

Government, trade and corporate transparency

Suppression of free speech and a free press

Diplomacy, spying and (counter-)intelligence

Ecology, climate, nature and sciences

Corruption, finance, taxes, trading

Censorship technology and internet filtering

Cults and other religious organizations

Abuse, violence, violation

3. Short essays on how a more inquiring media can make a difference in the world

3.1 The Malaria Case Study: the antidote is good governance born from a strong media

3.2 The importance of principled leaking to journalism, good government and a healthy society

3.3 Should the press really be free?

3.4 Could oppressive regimes potentially come to face legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks?

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