The Guardian’s hatchet job on Julian Assange. By Robert Stevens 10 March 2011 WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, by David Leigh and Luke Harding, published by the Guardian newspaper, is now being paraded as the “official” account of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. It is in reality a politically-motivated hatchet job aimed at discrediting Assange and facilitating his persecution by the Obama administration and its allies in the UK and Sweden.
The Guardian was the first of the five print media partners WikiLeaks worked with to assist in the publication of secret US diplomatic cables, beginning in late November of last year. Within a month of their initial publication, the newspaper had broken off relations with Assange. The new book by Leigh and Harding is in line with the Guardian’s campaign of character assassination against Assange, including its public declaration in favour of his extradition to Sweden. The campaign began publicly with the December 17 editorial “WikiLeaks: the man and the idea”. Stop Wikileaks Torture. Wikileaks. Wikileaks - Wikileaks. WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks | Media. WikiLeaks to Release Secret Swiss Bank Account Info. Swiss whistle-blower and former banker Rudolf Elmer has given WikiLeaks information about bank accounts of more than 2,000 prominent individuals, potentially exposing tax evasion, the BBC reports. The data is not yet available on WikiLeaks, but it was publicly given on two discs by Elmer to WikiLeaks founder and owner Julian Assange at a press conference in London this morning.
The data needs to be vetted before it gets released, and some of it will likely be handed over to the authorities. "Once we have looked at the data... there will be full revelation," said Assange. The freshly leaked data covers the period from 1990 to 2009 and concerns companies and individuals from many countries, including the UK, U.S. and Germany, Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag reports. Elmer himself said at the press conference that the data covers info about three different banks and 40 politicians.
[via BBC] The Liberal Curmudgeon: Clinton Embodies Contradictions Of Administration Opposition To WikiLeaks. Australian Politician Compares Attempts To Silence Assange With Catholic Church Silencing Galileo. Kevin Zeese: Bradley Manning and the Rule of Law. The case of Private Bradley Manning raises legal issues about his pre-trial detention, freedom of speech and the press, as well as proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Putting aside Manning's guilt or innocence, if Bradley Manning saw the Afghan and Iraq war diaries as well as the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, what should he have done? And, what should be the proper response of government to their publication?
A high point in the application of the rule of law to war came in the Nuremberg trials, where leaders in Germany were held accountable for World War II atrocities. Justice Robert Jackson, who served as the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials while on leave from the U.S. One of the key outcomes of the Nuremberg trials was that people who commit war crimes or crimes against humanity will be held accountable even if they were following orders. How do the Nuremberg Principles and other laws of war apply to Bradley Manning? These are a few examples among many. Michael Brenner: Lessons of WikiLeaks. It is time for some dispassionate appraisal of what the WikiLeaks affair has taught us. Lessons fall into three categories: foreign policy substance, diplomatic process, and political reaction.
Let's take them in reverse order. The first feature of the reaction that jumps to mind is the impulse to label it the Assange affair. That of course conforms to the frenzied, celebrity-scandal syndrome that is our fatal attraction. More consequential is the rage that the latest leaks have aroused in some circles. Where is the New York Times in all this? Yes, the illicit release of 400,000+ diplomatic cables is a serious matter that calls for legal review. Equally telling is the flight from responsibility of those senior officials who set up and maintained a recklessly operated non-system for distributing these 'secret' cables. We may also keep in mind the 845,000 persons with top secret clearances. Overall, I have mixed feelings about the WikiLeaks exposes - for obvious reasons.
WikiLeaks Contributes $15,000 to Bradley Manning’s Defense | Threat Level. WikiLeaks has finally made good on a months-old pledge to contribute financially to the defense of 23-year-old Bradley Manning, according to a group raising money for the imprisoned Army private suspected of providing WikiLeaks its most important U.S. releases. But the sum, $15,100, is less than half the $50,000 WikiLeaks originally promised. It’s also less than the group pledged in December, when WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said WikiLeaks would immediately transfer $20,000 to Manning’s defense fund. The Bradley Manning Support Network, which expressed frustration last month that it had not received the promised pledge, praised WikiLeaks’ contribution Thursday. ”This donation from WikiLeaks is vital to our efforts to ensure Bradley receives a fair, open trial,” wrote Mike Gogulski, the network’s founder, in a press release.
Manning was arrested last May in Iraq, and briefly held in Kuwait before being transferred to the U.S. Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. See also: DOJ subpoenas Twitter records of several WikiLeaks volunteers - Glenn Greenwald. (updated below – Update II – Update III) Last night, Birgitta Jónsdóttir — a former WikiLeaks volunteer and current member of the Icelandic Parliament — announced (on Twitter) that she had been notified by Twitter that the DOJ had served a Subpoena demanding information “about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009.”
Several news outlets, including The Guardian, wrote about Jónsdóttir’s announcement. What hasn’t been reported is that the Subpoena served on Twitter — which is actually an Order from a federal court that the DOJ requested — seeks the same information for numerous other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Julian Assange. It also seeks the same information for Bradley Manning and for WikiLeaks’ Twitter account. The information demanded by the DOJ is sweeping in scope. I’ll have much more on the implications of this tomorrow. Wiki leaks - Google Search. WIKILEAKS from Dec. 2010 till Feb. 2011. Why Journalists Aren't Defending Julian Assange. Wikileaks.