Hellhole

Bradley Manning faces 22 new charges

The US Army has charged a soldier held in connection with the leak of US government documents published by the Wikileaks website with 22 extra counts.

The new charges against Private First Class Bradley Manning include aiding the enemy, a capital offence, but prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty.
The intelligence analyst is being held at a military jail in Virginia.
He is suspected of leaking 620,000 diplomatic and military documents.
Pte Manning, who joined the US military in 2007, was initially charged in May with 12 counts of illegally downloading and sharing a secret video of a US military operation and secret military and diplomatic documents and cables.
The new charges accuse the soldier of using unauthorised software on government computers to download classified information and to make intelligence available to "the enemy".
Under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice, the offence is punishable by death.
But in a news release, the US Army said prosecutors would not seek the death penalty, although Pte Manning could face life in prison if tried and convicted.
Fresh details Pte Manning's lawyer David Coombs said the soldier's defence team had been preparing for the possibility of additional charges over the past few weeks.
Pte Manning is being held in solitary confinement in a high-security military prison at Quantico marine base, Virginia.
Mr Coombs has said he expects a hearing to determine whether the military has enough evidence to try the soldier to be held in May or June.
The newly released list of charges offers fresh details on the records Pte Manning is accused of obtaining illegally.
Those include:

More than 380,000 records from a database of military records from the Iraq war
90,000 records from a database of Afghan war files
250,000 records from a US state department diplomatic database
75 classified US state department cables, including one titled "Reykjavik-13"
A video file named "12 JUL 07 CZ ENGAGEMENT ZONE 30 GC"

In recent months, Wikileaks has published troves of documents it titled the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diary, and reams of secret US state department cables spanning five decades.
The site has also released a cable titled Reykjavik 13 that summarised US diplomats' discussions with Icelandic officials about that country's financial troubles, and a leaked video of a 2007 helicopter attack in Iraq that killed two Reuters news service employees.
@'BBC'

If Stuxnet was act of cyberwar, is US ready for a response?

wikileaks WikiLeaks

To be convicted of "aiding an enemy" US must prove alleged recipient @WikiLeaks, was "hostile body"

wikileaks WikiLeaks

'aiding the enemy', following US claims, suggests WikiLeaks will be defined as 'the enemy'. A serious abuse. http://is.gd/0XKqRz

Spielberg lines up WikiLeaks film based on Guardian book

Steven Spielberg looks set to oversee WikiLeaks: the Movie after securing the screen rights to WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, the book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. Reportedly conceived as an investigative thriller in the mould of All the President's Men, the film will be backed by DreamWorks – the studio founded in 1994 by Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.
Leigh and Harding's book charts Julian Assange's turbulent life and times, from his itinerant childhood through to the creation of the WikiLeaks website in 2006. It also provides the inside story of Assange's explosive partnership with the Guardian newspaper and the release, last December, of over 250,000 secret diplomatic cables.
In addition to snapping up the Leigh and Harding bestseller, DreamWorks have also secured rights to another book, Inside WikiLeaks, by Assange's former colleague, Daniel Domscheit-Berg. This has led insiders to speculate that DreamWorks executives are planning a heavily fictionalised thriller that cherry-picks from a variety of sources.
"A good template for what they are thinking is The Social Network, where Aaron Sorkin not only used the Ben Mezrich book The Accidental Billionaires as a resource, but gathered actual testimony from the lawsuits filed against Mark Zuckerberg that detailed the formation of Facebook and provided high drama," suggests Mike Fleming of the industry website Deadline Hollywood. "That allowed the film to be made without a rights deal from Zuckerberg."
Spielberg's picture is the most prominent of a number of WikiLeaks movies currently at various stages of development. These include a documentary by the award-winning film-maker Alex Gibney, director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, along with a mooted biopic, based on a New Yorker article by Raffi Khatchadourian and co-produced by HBO and the BBC.
Now in its embryonic stages, the DreamWorks version still requires a scriptwriter, a director and a cast. It may also need an ending, with all the evidence suggesting that the story of Julian Assange has some way left to run.
Reviled by his foes as a "high-tech terrorist", Assange is currently fighting an extradition order to Sweden to face accusations of sexual abuse. This week, he reportedly lashed out at his former collaborators at the Guardian, who, according to Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, he accused of being part of a "Jewish conspiracy" against him. There seems little doubt that Assange's life story provides enough red meat for dramatists. But the final act has surely yet to be written.
Xan Brooks @'The Guardian'

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What the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti means for Pakistan

Shahbaz Bhatti has become the second prominent Pakistani politician this year to die for his opposition to the country's blasphemy laws.
Bhatti, the minister for minorities and only Christian member of the cabinet, was shot dead outside his Islamabad home by four gunmen proclaiming themselves to be the 'Punjabi Taliban'.
Like Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was shot on 4 January, Bhatti advocated reform of the controversial laws, which can carry the death sentence for anyone who criticises Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. Because they do not require much concrete evidence, the laws are frequently abused to persecute minorities and settle personal scores.
The political tension over the issue flared up in November, when a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad. Both men spoke out in her favour.
However, they were left politically isolated when the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - of which both were members - distanced itself from those advocating reform.
Yousaf Raza Gilani told parliament at the beginning of February that his government would not touch the legislation. "We are all unanimous that nobody wants to change the law," he said.
This followed pressure from the religious right, who whipped up public sentiment with massive street rallies. However, giving such a major concession sets a dangerous precedent and indicates that the government is unwilling or unable to fight the extremists in the battle for public opinion.
It also suggests that the administration has learnt little from the disastrous 2009 truce with the Taliban. Under that peace agreement, Islamabad agreed to let the Taliban implement Islamic law in parts of north-western Pakistan, in the hope it would decrease the violence. Predictably, it actually meant that the Taliban became more audacious in its move inland, and the deal soon fell apart.
There are now fresh fears for Sherry Rehman, a former PPP information minister who has championed reform. Although the Taliban have declared her "fit to be killed", she has so far refused to leave the country. She has been in semi-hiding since January.
Poignantly, Bhatti was well aware of the danger to his life, and recorded a farewell statement four months ago in which he referred to threats from the Taliban and al-Qaeda. He vowed that he would continue to speak out for minorities:

I will die to defend their rights. These threats and these warnings cannot change my opinions and principles.

The government's decision to back down to religious clerics on this issue will be hugely fortifying to the country's extremists. It does not bode well for the future of Pakistan, or for its beleaguered minorities.
Samira Shackle @'New Statesman'