WIKILEAKS/ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #10, 1-30-12

OMNI

WIKILEAKS/ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #10,

January 30, 2012.

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace  (#9 July 21, 2011).

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:  http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/   For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.     Here is the link to the Index:  http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/

See Manning Newsletters and Snowden.

 

Contents of #9  Wikileaks/Assange

Timothy Vaslett:   Defense of WikiLeaks, Assange, Manning

Vaslett, Anonymous:  Monkeywrenching to Defend WikiLeaks

Amnesty International Praises WikiLeaks

Assange Wins Gellhorn Prize

WikiLeaks Blog by Greg Mitchell

 

 

Contents of #10

Help Wikileaks Expose

Petition for Assange

Rolling Stone Interview of Assange

US Persecution from Manning to Assange

Manning Opponent of War Crimes

Assange and Manning for Nobel Peace Prize

Tens of Thousands More

Justice Foreclosed

Films About Assange

Here is the link to all the newsletters on all subjects archived in the OMNI web site:  http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

 

 

    Help #WikiLeaks Liberate the Trans-Paci​fic Partnershi​p Negotiatin​g Text!

Just Foreign Policy info@justforeignpolicy.org via uark.edu

August 17, 2012 to jbennet

Dear Dick,

Help free the TPP! Make a pledge to donate to WikiLeaks should it publish the TPP text--and check out the campaign!

Take ActionOn September 6, negotiators will go to Leesburg, Virginia, for the latest round of secretive talks on the "Trans-Pacific Partnership" agreement. This proposed agreement threatens access to essential medicines in developing countries, threatens environmental regulations, and threatens internet freedom. Even Members of Congress and their staffs have been blocked from seeing the draft text, while corporate representatives have been allowed to see it.

Americans - and citizens of the other countries that would be covered by the agreement - have a right to see what our governments are proposing to do. Parts of the draft negotiating text have been leaked. We want to see the whole text!

So we're issuing a reward for the liberation of the TPP negotiating text. But our reward has some special features: we want as many people as possible to contribute what they can to raise the reward. That means you.

Check out the campaign and make a pledge here:  http://www.freetpp.org

 

So why are we trying to raise a reward for WikiLeaks to publish the TPP?

First of all, we want WikiLeaks to publish the text. We want this because it will show that WikiLeaks is still relevant to citizen demands for government transparency, that releasing U.S. diplomatic cables wasn't the end of WikiLeaks' contribution to public knowledge of government misdeeds. And we want this because it will show that the WikiLeaks campaign for government transparency isn't just about national security issues.

 

This week, Ecuador granted political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the threat of political persecution by the United States - as thousands of Americans had urged them to do through Just Foreign Policy's petition. But the UK authorities have refused to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador, and he remains trapped in Ecuador's embassy. Meanwhile, the corporate financial blockade of WikiLeaks has starved WikiLeaks of resources, while the legal fight to protect Assange from the threat of extradition to the United States has drained resources.

 

The reward isn't to whoever leaks the document, but to WikiLeaks if it publishes the document. In addition to helping WikiLeaks, this path will shield the leaker against any claim that they leaked the document for personal gain. It will be clear that they leaked the document to promote the public interest.

Second, we're "crowdsourcing" our reward. Instead of asking one rich person to put up the money for a reward, we're asking you to make a pledge to make a financial contribution to WikiLeaks, if WikiLeaks publishes the draft TPP negotiating text. If many people make small pledges, that will add up to a big reward. And the reward will grow over time, dramatizing public concern about the secretive TPP negotiations, about the lack of transparency [1], about the threat to access to essential medicines in developing countries [2], about the threat to environmental regulation [3], and about the threat to internet freedom. [4]

 

Can you help us launch this campaign by making a pledge to donate to WikiLeaks if it publishes the draft TPP negotiating text? You can make your pledge here:

 

http://www.freetpp.org

 

Thank you for all you do to help bring about a more just foreign policy,

Robert Naiman, Chelsea Mozen, Sarah Burns and Megan Iorio

Just Foreign Policy

Please support our work. Donate for a Just Foreign Policy.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate

 

References:

 

1. "Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks: Senators Demand Access To Controversial Documents After Leak," Zach Carter, Huffington Post, 06/25/2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/trans-pacific-partnership-documents-sherrod-brown-jeff-merkley-ron-wyden-robert-menendez_n_1624956.html

2. "Trading Away Health: How the U.S.’s Intellectual Property Demands for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Threaten Access to Medicines," Issue Brief, MSF Access Campaign, August 2012, http://aids2012.msf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/TPP-Issue-Brief-IAC-July2012.pdf

3. " The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (aka NAFTA on Steroids): What it could mean for the Environment ," Sierra Club, http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/downloads/TPP-Factsheet.pdf

4. "Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement," Electronic Frontier Foundaton, https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

 

 

 

 

    UK: Don't Allow US Extraditio​n of Assange

Since June 19, Wikileaks' Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London while his application for political asylum is reviewed. Meanwhile, Ecuadorean officials have been trying to reach a diplomatic resolution by seeking assurances from the US, UK, and Swedish governments that Assange will not be extradited to the United States if he travels to Sweden for questioning. But all three governments have remained silent on the issue. It is also being reported that the Swedish government has refused an offer to interview Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy.

 

But there is still hope. A senior legal advisor to the Ecuadoreans told the Guardian that the UK must waive what is called “specialty” for Assange to be extradited to the US after proceedings in Sweden are complete. If the UK were to give assurances that they would not waive specialty, Assange would be safe to venture to Sweden for questioning.

 

To date, there hasn't been much public pressure on the UK government to declare its intentions with regard to Assange. Let's change that. Sign our petition pressing the UK to publicly declare that it will not waive specialty in the case of Julian Assange.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/uk-dont-allow-us-extradition-assange

Thanks!

 

US the Real Betrayer

“Michael Hastings Interview With Julian Assange”

 Rolling Stone, January 18, 2012, RSN

Excerpt: "'The question is, where has the United States betrayed Madison and Jefferson, betrayed these basic values on how you keep a democracy? I think that the US military-industrial complex and the majority of politicians in Congress have betrayed those values.'"

READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/367-wikileaks/9503-focus-michael-hastings-interview-with-julian-assange  

 

Subject: Manning & Assange:  Manning Prosecution Lays Basis for Terror Charge Against Assange By Naomi Spencer   The United States government is seeking to use its prosecution of Manning, to lay the basis for extraditing Assange to the US and either prosecuting him as a terrorist or locking him away indefinitely in a military prison without any recourse to the courts or due process. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30075.htm

 

 

Bradley Manning: Traitor or Hero?  By Marjorie CohnIf

Manning had committed war crimes instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30071.html    From Sue S 12-26-11

 

Bradley Manning, Julian Assange Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

DJ Pangburn, Death And Taxes Magazine, Sept. 29, 2011

Pangburn writes: "And while a Nobel Peace Prize nomination might not help Manning avoid prison time or get Assange released from house arrest and his legal charade, it certainly is a form of vindication for both men; many people across the world admire their principled stand."

READ MORE   http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/287-124/7637-bradley-manning-julian-assange-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize

 

 

WikiLeaks Publishes Tens of Thousands More Cables

Mark Hosenball, Reuters, August 26, 2011

WikiLeaks is in the process of releasing tens of thousands of previously unpublished U.S. diplomatic cables, some of which are still classified.

READ MORE   http://www.readersupportednews.org/news-section2/367-wikileaks/7188-wikileaks-publishes-tens-of-thousands-more-cables 

 

 

For Julian Assange, Justice Foreclosed

JoAnn Wypijewski

August 29, 2012   |    This article appeared in the September 17, 2012 edition of The Nation.

·          

Every once in a while, a situation arises that so completely captures the spirit of the time—in this case, the horror moving like an amoeba under the surface of our pleasant days, our absurd distractions, our seemingly serious politics—that ordinary assumptions, ordinary arguments and their limited conclusions serve only to obliterate honesty, and so any hope of grappling with the real. Such is the case of Julian Assange now.

About the Author

JoAnn Wypijewski

JoAnn Wypijewski is a writer in New York. Contact her at jwyp at earthlink.net.

Also by the Author

Remembering Alex (Lived History, Journalists and Journalism, Nation History)

For what the ancients called avarice and iniquity, Alex’s hate was pure. No writer had a deadlier sting against the corruptions of empire.

JoAnn Wypijewski

Playing Doctor (Sex and Sexuality, Film, History)

When it comes to the distant past, there’s a lot we don’t know about what occurred sexually.

JoAnn Wypijewski

He is the wanted man. Wanted for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings, ostensibly on sexual misconduct allegations in Sweden, but maybe not; maybe on charges of espionage or conspiracy in the United States instead; maybe to face indefinite detention, maybe torture or life in prison. It’s so hard to know… But one thing is not mysterious: the law is no more capable of delivering justice in his case today than it was for a black man alleged to have raped a white woman in the Jim Crow South.

I am not comparing the founder of WikiLeaks, a white man benefiting from not only white-skin privilege and straight-man privilege but also class and celebrity privilege, with black men on the other side of a lynch mob. This is not about the particulars of oppression; it is about the political context of law, the limits of liberal expectations and the monstrosity of the state.

Liberals have no trouble generally acknowledging that in those rape cases against black men, the reasoned application of law was impossible. It was impossible because justice was impossible, foreclosed not by the vagaries of this white jury or that bit of evidence but by the totalizing immorality of white supremacy that placed the Black Man in a separate category of human being, without common rights and expectations. A lawyer might take a case if it hadn’t been settled by the mob, but the warped conscience of white America could do nothing but warp the law and make of its rituals a sham. The Scottsboro Boys might have been innocent or they might have been guilty; it didn’t matter, because either way the result would be the same.

With Assange, the political context is the totalizing immorality of the national security state on a global scale. The sex-crime allegations against Assange emerged in Sweden on August 20, 2010, approximately four and a half months after WikiLeaks blazed into the public sphere by releasing a classified video that showed a US Apache helicopter crew slaughtering more than a dozen civilians, including two journalists, in a Baghdad suburb. By that August, Pfc. Bradley Manning, the reputed source of the video and about 750,000 other leaked government documents, was being held without charge in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, subjected to what his attorney, David Coombs, describes in harrowing detail in a recent motion as “unlawful pretrial punishment.” In plain terms, Manning was tortured. He faces court-martial for aiding the enemy and has been denounced as a traitor by members of Congress.

For disseminating classified materials that exposed war crimes, Assange has been called a terrorist. A coloring book for children, The True Faces of Evil—Terror, from Big Coloring Books Inc. out of St. Louis, includes his face on a sheet of detachable trading cards, along with Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, Ted Kaczynski, Maj. Nidal Hasan and Bill Ayers. A commentator on Fox News urged President Obama to order his assassination. Vice President Joe Biden called him a “high-tech terrorist” and suggested that the Justice Department might be angling for a prosecution; that was two years ago. Indications of a secret grand jury investigation and imminent indictment have helped ratchet up the rhetoric and tension in and around the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange has received political asylum.

It has been common for the media to compartmentalize: on the one hand, there are complaints of sexual misconduct against Assange by two women in Sweden, which must be seen as a straightforward matter for law enforcement; on the other hand, there is his political activity, also his “attention-seeking,” “narcissism” and “arrogance,” which, come to think of it, sound a lot like traits in a rapist’s profile. Only rarely has anyone—notably Naomi Wolf and the team from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners program—begun with the intrinsic political challenge posed by WikiLeaks and proceeded from there to scrutinize the Swedish prosecutorial machinery.

That machinery is tricky. Police were so quick to initiate the arrest process that one of the women who came to them—to see if Assange could be forced to take an STD test after she’d had unprotected sex with him—became distraught and refused to give further testimony. The Swedish prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant for rape and molestation on one day and withdrew it the next, saying there was no reason to suspect rape, and that the other claim wasn’t serious enough for a warrant. About a week later, the Swedish director of prosecution reopened the investigation, and a court later approved her request to detain Assange for rape, molestation and unlawful coercion. By then he was in London, having been told he was free to leave Sweden. Assange was working with the New York Times and the Guardian in advance of launching the Iraq War Logs when the Swedes issued an international arrest warrant. He was readying the release of a cache of diplomatic cables when Interpol got involved, issuing a “red notice” for his arrest. In London, his legal efforts to block extradition were rejected by the High Court—whose strained decision was praised by the New Statesman’s David Allen Green as the ultimate in reasoned justice—and by the UK Supreme Court.

If the Swedish claims against Assange had involved anything but sex, it’s unlikely that liberals, and even some self-described radicals, would be tiptoeing around this part of the story, either by asking “So I guess he’s a bad guy?” or by arguing “Of course he needs to answer for his crimes.” If it were anything but sex, we would insist on the presumption of innocence. We have instead gotten comfortable with presuming guilt and trusting in the dignified processes of law to guarantee fairness.

“Believe the victim” entered the lexicon decades ago for historically understandable reasons. Women had been denied their own due process, in a sense—their right to make a complaint and expect justice, not vilification or worse. They are still being denied and derided, as the idiot spewings of Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin illustrate. The mutation of basic rights into an imperative for belief, and of full citizens into victims, has not made women any safer, but its cultural manipulation—particularly in high-profile cases—has struck at the foundations of civil liberty in a way that may not have been anticipated.

So here is the spectacle of Assange, as yet unindicted, bearing the dual brand of Sex Offender and Terrorist, the subhuman beings of the twenty-first century. The fusing of abuse and terror in his case thus implies two victims who must be believed, the women and the state. But the women’s claims are murky, and the state is not credible.

It should be possible to imagine a resolution outside the criminal justice system for problems that arise in the course of consensual sexual coupling: dissatisfaction over the use (or ill use) of condoms, constraints that keep people from expressing their wishes or intuiting those of another, selfishness, insensitivity, confusions as “yes” slides into “no” and back to “yes,” perhaps wordlessly—all issues that seem to apply in the Assange case but exist beyond it. That will require a braver sexual politics (and at least another column), and it does not demean experience to recognize that the language of punishment is a poor substitute for the lost language of love.

About the state, though, there must be no illusions. A nation that goes to war on fraud, that insists “We don’t torture” when evidence to the contrary abounds, that kidnaps foreign nationals and puts them on planes to be delivered to dungeons, that spies on its people, asserts its right to lock them up indefinitely and lets documented CIA torturers off the hook of accountability because they were only following orders: that nation will plot, and it will double-cross, and it will kill. Sweden participated in the US program of extraordinary rendition. The United Kingdom has threatened to storm Ecuador’s embassy. The United States now says it does not recognize the historic right of persons to seek diplomatic asylum. Assange’s lawyers have said that he will go to Sweden if he gets an absolutely firm guarantee from the Obama administration that it will not arrest him. Such a guarantee is impossible in an empire of lies.

FILMS ABOUT ASSANGE

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 5:55 PM, Susan wrote:

http://t.co/Hc6psnUR

thanks for sending this, I will share it

I watched the 19min animation description of the charges being filed against Assange 

and will watch the remaining 46min video about the case later

the topic is also a movie entitled "we steal secrets" shown at sundance this yr. interesting prof producer who seems convinced that assange should be extradited to sweden, came across with a lot of double talk in his interview on Democracy Now, I smell a rat

interesting indeed, assange SHOULD not be having unprotected sex with people he hardly knew but there are MANY men who would be behind bars for practising the same stupid behavior if that was going to make them a criminal   (from David Druding)

 

END WIKILEAKS NEWSLETTER #10