Thursday, 9 December 2010
The crux of the WikiLeaks debate
Below is the audio from the To the Point segment. Just trust me and listen to it. The first 20 minutes or so is just John Burns reporting on the Assange court hearing, which is unnecessary to listen to. Then, at roughly 23:45, the Rubin is brought in, and he repeats his denunciations of WikiLeaks that he published in The New Republic; he also claims that the diplomatic cables show no deceit or wrongdoing whatsoever on the part of the U.S. Government. Rubin's segment goes on for about 10 minutes, and while listening to it will give important context for what follows, it's not completely necessary.
I was finally brought in at the 32:15 mark and that's when things became quite contentious and illuminating. I've written about this before, but what's most remarkable is how -- as always -- leading media figures and government officials are completely indistinguishable in what they think, say and do with regard to these controversies; that's why Burns and Rubin clung together so closely throughout the segment, because there is no real distinction between most of these establishment reporters and the government; the former serve the latter. Below is the clip itself; I'm posting the specific evidence showing that Rubin's general claim (that these cables contain no deceit or wrongdoing) as well as his specific claims about Yemen were absolutely false...
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Glenn Greenwald @'Salon'
Abandoned on Everest
In 2006, a lone climber attempting the summit of Mount Everest for the third time was, purely by chance, caught in an amateur photograph taken by another climber of the scenic mountaintop ahead. The climber in the photograph was making his way up what is known as the Final Push of the Northeast ridge, between Camp VI at 8,230 m and the summit. It was late in the afternoon, a foolishly reckless time to undertake the lengthy and dangerous route.
It would be many hours before the the photographer and his climbing team saw the man again. Leaving the camp at the recommended time, shortly before midnight in order to reach the summit at daybreak, they were first in line of a total of roughly 40 climbers attempting the Final Push that day. A long train of men, all tethered to the lengths of rope permanently in place to keep climbers on the right track...
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Julian Assange extradition attempt an uphill struggle, says specialist
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been pursued over the allegations with ‘unusual zeal’, says Women Against Rape. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
A former extradition specialist for the Crown Prosecution Service today predicted it would be "very difficult" for Sweden to get the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, sent back to face sexual assault allegations.
Raj Joshi, a former head of the European and International Division at the CPS, said Sweden's lack of a formal criminal charge against Assange increased his lawyers' chances of success in blocking the extradition attempt.
Assange's lawyers are scheduled to visit him tomorrow in prison for the first time since he was jailed on remand yesterday after Sweden requested his extradition.
Swedish prosecutors say they want to interview Assange about allegations of sexual assault against two women. His lawyers say they fear the US will attempt to extradite him to face charges over the release of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables though Washington has not so far taken any legal action against him.
Today, a British group campaigning for more rapists to be punished questioned the "unusual zeal" with which Assange, an Australian citizen, was being pursued over the allegations of sexual assault in Sweden.
In a letter to the Guardian, Katrin Axelsson from Women Against Rape said it was routine for people charged with rape in the UK to be granted bail. Assange is yet to be formally charged by the Swedes. Axelsson also said Sweden had a poor record bringing rapists to justice: "Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations … There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety."
Assange is due to appear before City of Westminster magistrates's court next Tuesday where his lawyers will attempt to secure his release on bail, a request the court rejected this week.
Assange was arrested by the Metropolitan police's extradition squad on a European arrest warrant issued at the request of Sweden. But Joshi, who headed the CPS's international division for five years, said Sweden faced an uphill battle.
"On what we know so far, it is going to be very difficult to extradite. The judge has to be satisfied that the conduct equals an extraditable offence and that there are no legal bars to extradition.
"Assange's team will argue, how can the conduct equal an extraditable offence if the [Swedish] prosecutor doesn't think there is enough evidence to charge, and still has not charged."
Joshi said other bars to extradition would be Assange's rights under the European human rights legislation.
Assange is being held in Wandsworth prison, south London, where he has limited communication with the outside world. He has no internet access and today was allowed one three minute telephone conversation with his solicitors.
WikiLeaks volunteers today sent him a parcel containing clothes, letters of support, toiletries and a selection of books including one by his barrister Geoffrey Robertson.
Amid suggestions that the US is examining ways to take legal action against Assange, one of his lawyers, Mark Stephens, repeated his claims that Sweden's actions were politically motivated, perhaps as a stalling tactic while the Americans bring a charge: "If there are talks between Sweden and the US for his rendition, we have every reason to be concerned."
Vikram Dodd @'The Guardian'
Soundtrack by The Bomb Squad
Shocklee This cyber war stuff is the new reality tv...are people finally starting to wake the F*K up? we'll see... #wikileaks #payback
jamesrbuk Newt Gingrich: "Assange is an enemy combatant". Worth pointing out that experts suggest #wikileaks haven't broken US law at all?
‘Operation Payback’ Attacks Move on to Visa
Updated | 4:57 p.m. A group of Internet activists took credit for crashing the Visa.com Web site on Wednesday afternoon, hours after they launched a similar attack on MasterCard. Both sets of attacks, by activists who call themselves Anonymous, aimed at punishing companies that had taken action to stop the flow of donations to WikiLeaks in recent days. The group explained that its distributed denial of service attacks — in which they essentially flood Web sites site with traffic to slow them down or knock them offline — were part of a broader effort called Operation Payback, which began as a way of punishing companies that attempted to stop Internet file-sharing and movie downloads.
Visa’s Web site went offline minutes after the attack began and has not yet returned to service.
On Twitter, the activists behind Operation Payback celebrated the apparent success of their attack on Visa’s Web site, writing: “IT’S DOWN! KEEP FIRING!!! #DDOS #PAYBACK #WIKILEAKS.”
The move against Visa comes after a Web services company in Iceland, DataCell.com, which has supported WikiLeaks and still hosts a Web page facilitating donations to the organization, complained that the credit card company had tried to force it to stop working for the non-profit media site.
The chief executive of DataCell, Andreas Fink, explained in a statement that his company has been operating “a payment gateway so people can donate” to WikiLeaks for two months. On Tuesday, Mr. Fink said that Visa had asked him to stop accepting payment details from Visa cardholders who wanted to donate money to WikiLeaks. Mr. Fink declined to do so, explaining:
After discussions with our lawyers, we have decided that we can not honor such requests based on the pure simple fact of untrue and unverified accusations.
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship and/or limitation. The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law. Furthermore freedom of speech is recognized in European, inter-American and African regional human rights law.
It is simply ridiculous to even think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal. If WikiLeaks is criminal, then CNN, and BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and many others would have to be considered criminals too as they publish the same information. Nobody even tries to touch them though. You can still buy a New York Times subscription and pay with your credit card I guess.
On Wednesday, Mr. Fink added an update to his statement, in which he said that Visa and MasterCard had stopped processing all online payments facilitated by DataCell, to ensure that no money would make it to WikiLeaks. Mr Fink added that his company was taking “immediate legal actions to make donations possible again.”
He also wrote:
The suspension of payments towards WikiLeaks is a violation of the agreements with [Visa's] customers. Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to WikiLeaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish. It will probably hurt their brand much much more to block payments towards Wikileaks than to have them occur. Visa customers are contacting us in masses to confirm that they really donate and they are not happy about Visa rejecting them. It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down. We strongly believe a world class company such as Visa should not get involved by politics and just simply do their business where they are good at. Transferring money. They have no problem transferring money for other businesses such as gambling sites, pornography services and the like so why a donation to a Website which is holding up for human rights should be morally any worse than that is outside of my understanding….
This is not about the brand of Visa, this is about politics and Visa should not be involved in this.
Robert Mackey @'The Lede'
Anon_Operation TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM | TR:10 MINS. GET YOUR WEAPONS READY http://bit.ly/e6iR3X SET YOUR LOIC TO irc.anonops.net #ddos #wikiealsk #payback
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