Pentagon Manhunt
Daily Beast: June 10, 2010
Julian Assange
Anxious that Wikileaks may be on the verge of publishing a batch of secret State Department cables, investigators are desperately searching for founder Julian Assange. Philip Shenon reports.
(This story has been updated to reflect new developments on Assange’s whereabouts, including the cancelation of a scheduled appearance in Las Vegas.)
Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast.
The officials acknowledge that even if they found the website founder, Julian Assange, it is not clear what they could do to block publication of the cables on Wikileaks, which is nominally based on a server in Sweden and bills itself as a champion of whistleblowers.
“We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,” one U.S. official said of Assange.
American officials said Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait.
And given the contents of the cables, the feds have good reason to be concerned.
As The Daily Beast reported June 8, Manning, while posted in Iraq, apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East, regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders, according to an American diplomat.
The cables, which date back over several years, went out over interagency computer networks available to the Army and contained information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomat said.
American officials would not discuss the methods being used to find Assange, nor would they say if they had information to suggest where he is now. “We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,” one U.S. official said of Assange.
Assange, who first gained notoriety as a computer hacker, is as secretive as his website and has no permanent home.
He was scheduled to speak Friday in Las Vegas at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. But the group’s executive director, Mark Horvit, tells The Daily Beast that Assange canceled the appearance—he was on a panel to discuss anonymous sources—within the last several days as a result of unspecificed “security concerns.” Horvit said he communicated with Assange through email and did not know where he might be.
Last week, Assange was scheduled to join famed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg for a talk at New York’s Personal Democracy Forum. Assange appeared via Skype from Australia instead, saying lawyers recommended he not return to the United States.
Julian Assange, in April 2010, discussing confidential sources in the digital age
Assange was in the United States as recently as several weeks ago, when he gave press interviews to promote the website’s release of an explosive 2007 video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters.
Wikileaks has not replied directly to email messages from The Daily Beast.
However, in cryptic messages he sent this week via Twitter, Wikileaks referred to an earlier Daily Beast article on the investigation of Manning and said that it “looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S. has.”
In an earlier post, the site said that allegations that “we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.”
This morning, a new Wikileaks tweet went out: “Any signs of unacceptable behavior by the Pentagon or its agents towards this press will be viewed dimly.”
Pentagon investigators say that particular post may have been an effort by Wikileaks to throw them—and news organizations—off the track as the site prepared the library of State Department cables for release, officials said.
“It looks like they’re playing some sort of semantic games,” one American official said of Wikileaks. “They may not have 260,000 cables, but they’ve probably got enough cables to make trouble.”
In another cryptic Twitter message, the site said that while the State Department might be alarmed about the prospect of the release of classified cables, “we have not been contacted.”
American officials were unwilling to say what would happen if Assange is tracked down, although they suggested they would have many more legal options available to them if he were still somewhere in the United States.
Manning has reportedly admitted that he downloaded 260,000 diplomatic cables and provided them to Wikileaks. In Internet chat logs first revealed by Wired magazine, Manning also took credit for leaking the 2007 video to the website.
“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available,” Manning wrote of the diplomatic cables, according to Wired.
Wikileaks has not confirmed that Manning is a source of any information posted on the site. “We do not know if Mr. Manning is our source, but the U.S. military is claiming he is, so we will defend him,” Wikileaks said in another Twitter message.
Manning was turned in to the Pentagon by a former computer hacker based in California, Adrian Lamo, after Manning approached Lamo for counsel. Manning is believed to have contacted Lamo after reading a recent profile of him in Wired.
In the chat log revealed by Wired, Manning bragged to Lamo about having downloaded a huge library of State Department cables, as well as the 2007 video of the helicopter attack, and having provided the material to Wikileaks.
Manning took credit for having leaked a classified diplomatic cable that has already appeared on the site—a memo prepared by the United States embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, that described a meeting there between American and Icelandic officials over that country’s banking meltdown.
The January 2010 memo may have been of special interest to Wikileaks given the site’s close ties to Iceland, where Assange has based himself at times and where he worked with local lawmakers to draft free-speech laws that give broad freedom to journalists to protect their sources.
A profile this week in The New Yorker magazine depicted Assange feverishly at work with Icelandic colleagues in Reykjavik in March as he organized the release of the 2007 video of the helicopter attack. The edited video was given the title Collateral Murder, and its release infuriated officials at the Defense Department.
With its network of whistleblowers, Wikileaks has published documents and videos on its site that have outraged other foreign governments. To protect the site from attack by intelligence agencies, Assange has placed Wikileaks on several Internet servers, making it all but impossible for any government to shut down the site entirely.
Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.
‘Assange Is in Some Danger’
Daily Beast: June 11, 2010
As feds hunt for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange in hopes of preventing him from publishing diplomatic secrets, Samuel P. Jacobs talks with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about why he should stay out of America—and why some things should be kept secret.
Government officials tell The Daily Beast that they are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, whom they believe is in possession of State Department secrets leaked to him by an Army intelligence specialist now under arrest. As Assange, the Australian champion of whistleblowers cancelled a public appearance in Las Vegas Friday night, The Daily Beast talked with Daniel Ellsberg, the legendary leaker of the Pentagon Papers about Assange’s safety and what he would do if he were in possession of the State Department’s confidential traffic. Since standing trial for providing state secrets to newspapers—he was acquitted in 1973—Ellsberg has become an author and activist.
Having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security.
The Daily Beast: Could the release of the diplomatic cables said to be in the possession of Wikileaks endanger national security?
Daniel Ellsberg: Any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning. The embarrassment would be our awareness that we are supporting and facilitating dictators and corrupt and murderous governments, and we are quite aware of their nature.
• Exclusive: The Pentagon Manhunt for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange
An example would be surrounding a visit of Hamid Karzai to this country…where he is given a special audience with the president. We know that privately he is seen realistically. We know that because of the leak, which I think started out of this investigation. We know that because of the leak from Ambassador Eikenberry. He describes him as irredeemably corrupt, not an appropriate partner for a pacification program, and cannot change.
They would regard this as very embarrassing, [since publicly they’ve been] saying, he is a perfectly suitable partner for pacification, working on corruption…Ha ha….Bullshit.
Do you think Assange is in danger?
I happen to have been the target of a White House hit squad myself. On May 3, 1972, a dozen CIA assets from the Bay of Pigs, Cuban émigrés were brought up from Miami with orders to “incapacitate me totally.” I said to the prosecutor, “What does that mean? Kill me.” He said, “It means to incapacitate you totally. But you have to understand these guys never use the word ‘kill.’”
Is the Obama White House anymore enlightened than Nixon’s?
We’ve now been told by Dennis Blair, the late head of intelligence here, that President Obama has authorized the killing of American citizens overseas, who are suspected of involvement in terrorism. Assange is not American, so he doesn’t even have that constraint. I would think that he is in some danger. Granted, I would think that his notoriety now would provide him some degree of protection. You would think that would protect him, but you could have said the same thing about me. I was the number one defendant. I was on trail but they brought up people to beat me up.
You believe he is in danger of bodily harm, then?
Absolutely. On the same basis, I was….Obama is now proclaiming rights of life and death, being judge, jury, and executioner of Americans without due process. No president has ever claimed that and possibly no one since John the First.
What advice would you give Assange?
Stay out of the U.S. Otherwise, keep doing what he is doing. It’s pretty valuable…He is serving our democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country.
He is doing very good work for our democracy. If [the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning] has done what he is alleged to have done, I congratulate him. He has used his opportunities very well. He has upheld his oath of office to support the Constitution. It so happens that enlisted men also take an oath to obey the orders of superiors. Officers don’t make that oath, only to the Constitution. But sometimes the oath to the Constitution and oath to superiors are in conflict.
Assange has taken the position that all information should be out there. Do you agree?
He has talked about not holding anything back. I wouldn’t agree with that. Some judgments should be made. Frankly, I don’t know whether he would really act on that.
In your opinion, not everything should be released.
Yes, there are things that should be kept secret for some period of time. It’s a matter of time that it can be kept. To say that there are no such things is unrealistic and doesn’t stand up under much thought. [Assange] is taking a position there that on its face is not sustainable, but he might well not keep it. He’s obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security.
And what about these cables in particular?
On the question of those 260,000 diplomatic cables, it is not my position that nothing in them could deserve to be secret, that nothing deserves to be secret. I don’t know. I haven’t read them. Having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security. That’s distinct [from the percentage that could cause] embarrassment—very serious embarrassment, [if people] realize that we are aware of highly murderous and corrupt operations by people and that we are supporting them. It is very seriously embarrassing.
I think a better judgment would be to look over the 260,000 cables and exclude those which on their surface are dangerous. If the choice is between putting none of them out, as the State Department would like, and putting all of them out, I definitely feel our national security would be improved if they were put out. Between those two choices, I would rather see them all of them out. It would help understand our own foreign policy and give us the chance to improve it democratically. I hope they are out, I hope we get to see them.
Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Capt. Paul Watson is the most fearless and dedicated environmentalists on the planet, someone who actually, at enormous risk, puts himself between the whalers and the whales. That he should be charged with what he has done publicly for 40 years ranks as nothing less than a lifetime achievement award.]
Anti-whaling leader on Interpol wanted list
Agence France-Presse: June 25, 2010
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0625/antiwhaling-leader-interpol-wanted-list/
Paul Watson
Interpol this week placed the head of US-based anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd on an international wanted list at Japan’s request, authorities in Tokyo said Friday.
The Japan Coastguard was informed by Interpol Thursday about the listing of Canadian Paul Watson, 59, for allegedly conspiring to harass whaling ships in Antarctic clashes in February, a coastguard spokeswoman said.
The coastguard filed the request with the French-based police service in April as part of Japan’s long-running battle with militant environmentalists from Watson’s Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Kyodo News said Japan had asked Interpol to issue a so-called blue notice, asking national police forces to provide information on Watson’s whereabouts and activities, but not a red notice requesting his arrest.
Japan hunts whales under a loophole to an international moratorium that allows the killing of the sea mammals for scientific research, but it does not hide the fact that the meat is later sold in shops and restaurants.
Sea Shepherd has long sought to obstruct Japan’s whalers and this year claimed its most successful season yet by preventing the harpoon ships from killing hundreds of the ocean giants.
Japanese authorities say the activists inflicted chemical burns on whaling crews by throwing bottles of butyric acid, which the Sea Shepherd group describes as rancid-butter stink bombs.
Sea Shepherd’s futuristic powerboat the Ady Gil, carrying six crew, sank after it was sliced in two in a collision with the whaling fleet’s security ship in January.
The boat’s captain Peter Bethune later boarded a whaling ship and was detained. He is now on trial in Tokyo for trespass, causing injury and other charges. Prosecutors have demanded two years in prison for the New Zealander.
The court is due to deliver its verdict on July 7.
Right-wing Japanese protesters banned from film of dolphin cull
David McNeill
Independent: June 26, 2010
A Japanese court has issued a rare ban against demonstrators who have hounded screenings of an Oscar-winning documentary exposing the country’s infamous annual dolphin cull.
Yokohama regional court ordered members of a right-wing protest group to stay away from a theatre showing The Cove, which depicts the slaughter of 23,000 dolphins every year in the fishing town of Taiji.
Bullhorn-wielding ultra-nationalists have repeatedly descended on theatres that plan to screen the 92-minute movie, denouncing it as anti-Japanese. They say the documentary is a front for the direct-action conservationists, Sea Shepherd, which they denounce as a “terrorist” group. A general Japanese release of The Cove has been stalled for over a year amid fears of protests and even violent retribution against cinemas.
But film distributor Unplugged decided to take on the protesters on condition that the movie’s makers block the faces of the local people it depicts. Over 20 theatres have agreed to screen it after a group of directors and publishers stood up to defend it, turning the controversy into a free-speech debate.
The court ban comes after a proposal to solve the bitter whaling dispute disintegrated this week at the conference of the International Whaling Commission in Agadir, Morocco. The vacuum left by that failure will likely lead to more action by conservationists – and retaliation by the Japanese authorities.
Tokyo yesterday placed the Sea Shepherd leader, Paul Watson, on an international wanted list as part of a campaign against eco-warriors who target the whaling industry. Japan’s Coast Guard accuses Mr Watson of ordering an attack on its Antarctic whaling fleet earlier this year, when activists allegedly pelted the whaling crew with a mild acid. [FACT: Butyric ‘acid’ is actually the main ingredient in stink-bombs. It has no caustic properties.]
Sea Shepherd’s boat, the Ady Gil, captained by Peter Bethune, was destroyed in subsequent clashes when it collided with a whaling ship.
Mr Bethune is likely to be found guilty of obstructing the hunt and injuring a whaling crew member when the Tokyo District Court announces its verdict on 7 July.
Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki also face lengthy custodial sentences on charges of trespass and theft after they tried to expose the alleged embezzlement of whale meat aboard Japan’s main whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru. The two intercepted one of dozens of boxes of whale meat they say were sent illegally by the whaling crew to addresses across Japan. The authorities responded by ignoring the claims and launching a ferocious campaign against Greenpeace.
The court order, requested by the distributor, is a rare piece of good news for anti-whaling campaigners.
An Unplugged spokeswoman told the Japanese press that they demanded the ban after protesters targeted the company.
Last night an ultra-nationalist, Makoto Sakurai, promised no let up in his group’s campaign. “It’s full of lies and distortion of our culture by Westerners who hate Japan,” he said. “We are right and we will continue.”
[FACT comments: When any country has to spend a billion dollars to make sure citizens are kept out, there’s something wrong. The globalisation meetings are no more than a rich boys club, planning how to wring another five cents from those same citizens. With Canada’s many social problems, this money could have been spent on Canadians rather than against them. It appears, as in Quebec City, there was a fair contingent of black-garbed agents provocateurs starting the rioting.]
Canada Agog at Security Price Tag for Summit
The New York Times: June 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/global/27security.html?ref=todayspaper
Few Canadians expected that hosting world leaders at back-to-back summit meetings here this weekend would be cheap or convenient. With downtown Toronto a security maze, businesses boarded up and even the beloved Blue Jays baseball team sent packing, the meetings have met all expectations for aggravation.
But it is the cost of providing security that has elicited gasps.
The latest government estimate is $897 million for three days of summitry. That comes to about $12 million per hour, or a total near what the government spends per year in the war in Afghanistan.
“The cost of these summits is completely out of whack and extravagant and exorbitant,” said Don Davies, a New Democratic Party member of Parliament.
Mark Holland of the Liberal Party called the conference “the most expensive 72 hours in Canadian history.”
Ever since the infamous Battle in Seattle, the World Trade Organization summit meeting in 1999 in which violent street protests led to 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage, security has been a prime concern for international summit meetings. And as terrorist threats have increased, the costs have soared.
But critics point out that Canada’s security expenses are several times larger than those of other recent summit meeting hosts.
The security costs for the Group of 20 meeting last year in Pittsburgh, for example, was about $95 million, slightly over a tenth of Canada’s budget, according to a study by Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Until this weekend, the highest security cost for a Group of 20 summit meeting was $345 million for the 2008 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan, the report said.
Government officials have defended the costs as necessary. “The cost is expensive, but the security is worth it,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told Parliament last month.
“Nobody has written a blank check,” Ward P. D. Elcock, the federal government’s summit meeting security coordinator, told the newspaper The Globe and Mail.
They point out that Canada’s hosting of two summit meetings — the Group of 8, which ended here on Saturday, and the Group of 20, which began later that day in Toronto — was unprecedented and required unprecedented levels of security.
And they say other countries may have undercounted their costs. The estimate for Pittsburgh, for example, did not account for some costs that Canada included, like the purchase and leasing of equipment and security-related transportation.
Mr. Davies said those amounts may have added another $100 million, but would still leave the total a fraction of what Canada is spending.
Since Seattle, other summit meeting hosts have sought to cut costs and improve security by holding the meetings in remote resort areas that are difficult to reach and easy to seal off. Security for the 2002 Group of 8 meeting in the Canadian resort of Kananaskis, Alberta, for instance, cost only $217 million. The 2004 meeting on Sea Island, Ga., separated from the mainland by four miles of marsh, cost about $135 million to secure.Canada initially sought the same kind of advantages when it invited the Group of 8 to Huntsville, a town in the Muskoka tourist region known for its lakes, summer cottages and, this time of year, bloodthirsty swarms of mosquitoes and black flies.
But last September, the leaders of the wealthiest nations decided to add a meeting of the Group of 20, which includes major developing countries. Huntsville was too small for the larger group, Toronto was offered, and officials say that is when security costs began to compound.
The cost in Canadian currency is $930 million, a figure newspapers and angry politicians have rounded up to a billion. While that figure may be closer to the truth once the final bill is reckoned, it has also encouraged use of the alliterative aspersion “billion-dollar boondoggle.”
By far the largest chunks are for personnel. The security force for the two meetings includes 20,000 soldiers, intelligence agents and police officers drawn from across Canada, a draft of about 13 percent of all available police officers and troops in the country.
The Public Safety Department has budgeted $438 million for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Another $285 million was designated to reimburse local and provincial police departments for the officers borrowed by the federal government. The military gets $72 million.
Beyond these general categories, the government has offered little information about how the money is being spent, citing national security concerns. But the lack of information has provoked loud demands for explanations.
“No Canadian begrudges them spending an appropriate amount on security and we also understand that with security there’s lots we can’t be told,” Mr. Davies said. “But having said that, we should know an awful lot more.”
Another security cost, critics say, is the suspension of civil liberties in and around the meeting zone. The province of Ontario has handed the police extraordinary powers to stop and search anyone near the fence. Julian Fantino, the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, said such curbs on constitutional rights were necessary.
The costly security system received its first big test on Saturday in Toronto and was not well reviewed by some afterward.
A group of militant protesters broke away from a large group of peaceful demonstrators and vandalized two police cars and set two others on fire in the financial district.
At that point, police officers appeared to retreat into the fenced-in security area.
The protesters then ran up several blocks of Yonge Street, the city’s main street, smashing store windows along the way and, in some cases, looting.
Several merchants said no police officers were present at the time.
Early in the evening two police cars were lit on fire just north of the summit site in a nightclub and shopping district. They burned for about 25 minutes before the police and the fire department arrived.
“Where were the police?” asked Juavon Herbert, a passerby who had photographed the start of the blaze. “You have businesses beside that and the fire could have spread. It’s $1 billion to protect a small number of people, not the city.”
[FACT comments: A lot of the conclusions here apply to Thailand and far too many other places.]
Is the U.S. a Fascist Police-State?
Zero Hedge: June 25, 2010
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-us-fascist-police-state
But with yesterday’s Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision (No. 08-1498, also 09-89) of the Supreme Court, coupled with last week’s Arar v. Ashcroft denial of certiorari (No. 09-923), the case for claiming that the U.S. is a fascist police-state just got a whole lot stronger.
First of all, what is a “fascist police-state”?
A police-state uses the law as a mechanism to control any challenges to its power by the citizenry, rather than as a mechanism to insure a civil society among the individuals. The state decides the laws, is the sole arbiter of the law, and can selectively (and capriciously) decide to enforce the law to the benefit or detriment of one individual or group or another.
In a police-state, the citizens are “free” only so long as their actions remain within the confines of the law as dictated by the state. If the individual’s claims of rights or freedoms conflict with the state, or if the individual acts in ways deemed detrimental to the state, then the state will repress the citizenry, by force if necessary. (And in the end, it’s always necessary.)
What’s key to the definition of a police-state is the lack of redress: If there is no justice system which can compel the state to cede to the citizenry, then there is a police-state. If there exists apro forma justice system, but which in practice is unavailable to the ordinary citizen because of systemic obstacles (for instance, cost or bureaucratic hindrance), or which against all logic or reason consistently finds in favor of the state—even in the most egregious and obviously contradictory cases—then that pro forma judiciary system is nothing but a sham: A tool of the state’s repression against its citizens. Consider the Soviet court system the classic example.
A police-state is not necessarily a dictatorship. On the contrary, it can even take the form of a representative democracy. A police-state is not defined by its leadership structure, but rather, by its self-protection against the individual.
A definition of “fascism” is tougher to come by—it’s almost as tough to come up with as a definition of “pornography”.
The sloppy definition is simply totalitarianism of the Right, “communism” being the sloppy definition of totalitarianism of the Left. But that doesn’t help much.
For our purposes, I think we should use the syndicalist-corporatist definition as practiced by Mussolini: Society as a collection of corporate and union interests, where the state is one more competing interest among many, albeit the most powerful of them all, and thus as a virtue of its size and power, taking precedence over all other factions. In other words, society is a “street-gang” model that I discussed before. The individual has power only as derived from his belonging to a particular faction or group—individuals do not have inherent worth, value or standing.
Now then! Having gotten that out of the way, where were we?
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project: The Humanitarian Law Project was advising groups deemed “terrorists” on how to negotiate non-violently with various political agencies, including the UN. In this 6-3 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court ruled that that speech constituted “aiding and abetting” a terrorist organization, as the Court determined that speech was “material support”. Therefore, the Executive and/or Congress had the right to prohibit anyone from speaking to any terrorist organization if that speech embodied “material support” to the terrorist organization.
The decision is being noted by the New York Times as a Freedom of Speech issue; other commentators seem to be viewing it in those terms as well.
My own take is, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project is not about limiting free speech—it’s about the state expanding it power to repress. The decision limits free speech in passing, because what it is really doing is expanding the state’s power to repress whomever it unilaterally determines is a terrorist.
In the decision, the Court explicitly ruled that “Congress and the Executive are uniquely positioned to make principled distinctions between activities that will further terrorist conduct and undermine United States foreign policy, and those that will not.” In other words, the Court makes it clear that Congress and/or the Executive can solely and unilaterally determine who is a “terrorist threat”, and who is not—without recourse to judicial review of this decision. And if the Executive and/or Congress determines that this group here or that group there is a “terrorist organization”, then their free speech is curtailed—as is the free speech of anyone associating with them, no matter how demonstrably peaceful that speech or interaction is.
For example, if the Executive—in the form of the Secretary of State—decides that, say, WikiLeaks or Amnesty International is a terrorist organization, well then by golly, it is a terrorist organization. It no longer has any right to free speech—nor can anyone else speak to them or associate with them, for risk of being charged with providing “material support” to this heinous terrorist organization known as Amnesty International.
But furthermore, as per Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, anyone associating with WikiLeaks—including, presumably, those who read it, and most certainly those who give it information about government abuses—would be guilty of aiding and abetting terrorism. In other words, giving WikiLeaks “material support” by providing primary evidence of government abuse would render one a terrorist.
This form of repression does seem to fit the above definition of a police-state. The state determines—unilaterally—who is detrimental to its interests. The state then represses that person or group.
By a 6-3 majority, the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that Congress and/or the Executive is “uniquely positioned” to determine who is a terrorist and who is not—and therefore has the right to silence not just the terrorist organization, but anyone trying to speak to them, or hear them.
And let’s just say that, after jumping through years of judicial hoops, one finally manages to prove that one wasn’t then and isn’t now a terrorist, the Arar denial of certiorari makes it irrelevant. Even if it turns out that a person is definitely and unequivocally not a terrorist, he cannot get legal redress for this mistake by the state.
So! To sum up: The U.S. government can decide unilaterally who is a terrorist organization and who is not. Anyone speaking to such a designated terrorist group is “providing material support” to the terrorists—and is therefore subject to prosecution at the discretion of the U.S. government. And if, in the end, it turns out that one definitely was not involved in terrorist activities, there is no way to receive redress by the state.
Sounds like a fascist police-state to me.
[FACT comments: “Soft” censorship is self-censorship, like political correctness or ‘blasphemy’ laws. Some of us still believe a single human life is a perfect creation. Killers of daughters, sisters, wives deserve no sympathy no matter their religion.]
“Soft” Censorship: Honor Killings That You Won’t Read About
Pajamas Media: June 16, 2010
The mainstream media rarely covers them. More often, local media does, but even local media does so walking on eggshells, careful to quote from at least one apologist and one know-nothing. Usually, the (hardcopy) mainstream media covers such events weeks later, only briefly, or as a way to “spin” any possible prejudice against the perpetrators involved. Sometimes they are mentioned, but only in passing. Rarely do follow-ups appear. Usually, a wire service piece is used, and no original reporting is done. Sometimes, the newspaper’s blog might refer to a piece which first appeared in another newspaper which, in turn, has mentioned the subject only in passing.
I am talking about how rarely the American mainstream media covers honor killings committed in North America.
For example, there was no mention of the 2006 honor murder of 20-year-old Canadian-Afghan Muslim, Khatera Sadiqi, and her fiancée, Feroz Mangal, by her brother, Habibullah, in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
Khatera Sadiqi and Feroz Mangal
Alright, this took place in Canada, not in the United States. That might explain it. Ah, no so fast.
One could only read about the very high profile 2008 Dallas-based honor killings of the two Egyptian-American Muslim Said sisters, Sarah and Amina, in a single paragraph of 60 words, which was buried in a piece of 911 words in the New York Times. There was nothing in the Los Angeles Times and nothing in the hardcopy version of the Washington Post, although some blogs appeared at their website which referred to another newspaper article which had mentioned these murders in passing.
Sarah and Amina Said
Guess what? The Wall Street Journal was out to lunch on this one too.
To their credit, Fox News systematically reported on the Said sisters and also ran a documentary devoted to their case. And, of course, to our credit, the blogosphere was lit up like Times Square about this case. Special kudos to Pajamas Media, FrontPage, Newsrealblog, Islam in Europe, Europe News, Human Rights Service, War to Mobilize Democracy, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, and all the many other blogs that have been tracking honor killings worldwide.
Nevertheless, the father-murderer of these two young girls who were murdered for being “too western” remains safely at large, probably back home in Egypt raising another family or two.
The New York Times also failed to cover the 2008 honor killings of American-Pakistani Muslim Sandeela Kanwal in Atlanta, Georgia, and American-Ethiopian Muslim Hawlett Mohammed, in Alexandria, Virginia — but they covered, at length, the 2008 murder of Hindu-American Monika Rani, who was burned alive in Oak Forest, Illinois, by her father because she married below her caste. This honor killing merited 470 words in the Gray Lady.
I am not surprised because when it comes to honor killings the mainstream media is far more attentive to Hindu than to Muslim honor murders. (Most Hindu caste-related honor killings seem to occur in India, not in the Indian diaspora in the West).
Likewise, the Los Angeles Times had a brief comment about Monika Rani but did not cover the Kanwal or Mohammed honor killings. The hardcopy Washington Post did not cover Kanwal but they did refer to the nearby Virginia-based Mohammed honor killing briefly.
In 2009, the gruesome beheading of Aasiya Z. Hassan was covered only five days later by the New York Times — and then mainly to explain that Islam had nothing to do with it and that anyone who believes to the contrary is misguided or prejudiced. The LA Times covered it a day later but only in passing in a “News in Brief” section. The New York Times also discussed this case at its blog but mainly in order to highlight the “soul searching” that this beheading had caused among Muslims of good will. The Paper of Record failed to discuss “Mo” Hassan’s long and awful history as the savage batterer of three wives.
Aasiya Hassan
Aasiya Hassan merited a brief blurb in the Los Angeles Times and was merely noted in passing in a Wall Street Journal blog.
What is going on here? It seems to me that if something happens, ostensibly for the first time, a newspaper would want to cover it as a “first.” That did not happen. Alright — but if the “first” such event is only the “first” among other subsequent, similar events, both here and in Europe, and the phenomenon seems to be escalating over time, a responsible newspaper should want to cover it as an important problem. That, too, did not happen.
Perhaps no op-ed writer has yet come forward who is able and willing to connect the dots. Not so, not true. For example, recently, I myself tried to interest the four major mainstream media outlets mentioned above in an op-ed piece about my own recent academic findings about how and why honor killings are escalating in the West and how honor killings are not the same as Western domestically violent femicide. All four mainstream media venues turned down my query — and separately, the query of a like-minded colleague.
Right now, there is “breaking news” about three honor killing cases in Canada which is, after all, our next door neighbor, and far closer than Hawaii and Alaska, which are American states. So far, all is quiet on Canada’s southern border.
Sunday morning, June 13, 2010, a Canadian-Afghan Muslim mother tried to kill her 19-year-old daughter in Montreal because she had stayed out too late Saturday night — but you probably haven’t read about this in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, or the Wall Street Journal. (Of course, Canadian papers are covering this).
On June 14, 2010, the Canadian-Pakistani Muslim father and brother who murdered 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez at the end of 2007 (for being “too Western”), finally pleaded guilty; and the Indian-Canadian Sikh man who murdered his 22-year-old daughter-in-law in 2009 for wanting to leave her arranged marriage to his son, was sentenced to life without parole for at least fifteen years. You will not have read about this in mainstream American papers.
Aqsa Parvez
Why is such “soft” censorship important? Because law enforcement officials, public policy experts, professors, smaller newspapers, endangered victims, and both their helpers and advocates might have absolutely no idea that the problem is serious; their legislative or fundraising attempts will not be taken seriously and will be seen as raising “non-issues,” or tilting at invisible windmills.
Our fear of criticizing murder because it has been committed by an immigrant of color who might be a Muslim (we do not want to be seen as “racist Islamophobes”), trumps our commitment to uphold the law for all who live here, even if they, too, are immigrants of color who also happen to be Muslims. And usually female.
[FACT comments: And this guy ran for President?!?]
US Senator wants Internet seizure rights
Welcome to headline grabbing Groundhog Day
The Register: June 12, 2010
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/15/bill_seeks_internet_seizure_rights/
A new bill introduced to Congress calls for a new government body to oversee the internet as well as provide emergency powers to a “director of cyberspace policy” as well as the President.
The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman, would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and extend the already-broad definition of “critical infrastructure” to the Internet.
Since the United States is home to most of the Internet root server locations, as well as most of the companies serving up critical Internet functions such as VeriSign (operator of dot-com), ICANN (overseeing DNS policy body), and with ICANN and VeriSign working under a US government contract to provide the location of all other Internet registries across the world, such a Bill would effectively give a single individual de facto control over the internet.
As such, were the Act to be passed into law, it would cause the almost immediate fracturing of the internet into dozens of different networks and have a devastating impact on the “security and resiliency of the cyber and communications infrastructure” that it purported to protect.
Despite Senator Lieberman’s position as chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, this Bill will be gutted or shelved altogether following active lobbying by those that run the internet’s infrastructure, as well as the countless US companies that rely on the internet for their business, US government civil servants, the White House, and any and all elected officials asked to review it.
It is not the first time Senator Lieberman has used his position on the Committee to promote a headline-grabbing double-whammy of internet and security fears.
In 2008, he piggybacked on a Terrorism Prevention Act (that was subsequently dropped) to voice his concern that terrorists were using the internet to promote their views. He made headlines by castigating YouTube, produced a report called “Violent Islamist Extremism, the internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat” and threatened to introduce a Bill to give the US government powers over the internet. As soon as the headlines dropped, so did the proposed legislation.
This time, the spark has been recent coverage of a cybersecurity bill, the International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act; a suggestion by Defense Secretary Lynn that a cybersurveillance program be created; and a book by the counterterrorism adviser of Presidents Clinton and Bush, Richard Clarke, called Cyberwar: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. Neither the cybercrime act nor the cybersurveillance program nor the cyberwar book suggests the government be given any powers over Internet infrastructure.
But Senator Lieberman is not the only Senator guilty of playing on fears and a general misunderstanding of how the internet works to put forward bad legislation.
Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe proposed in the CyberSecurity Act of 2009 that the President be given similar all-encompassing powers over the internet.
In this case, the President would be given the right to shut down all internet traffic in an emergency, as well as the right to disconnect part of the internet’s infrastructure. The Commerce Secretary was also to be given the power to have access to all data over networks deemed as “critical infrastructure”.
Rather worrying at the time, Senators Rockefeller and Snowe appeared to be much more serious about their proposals that Senator Lieberman is currently. Nevertheless, following a reality-check of how the internet actually functions, all the provisions were pulled out and the Act now requires US government agencies to prepare emergency contingency plans, rather than give them the right to seize control of infrastructure.
The core reality of the internet, as has been explained to disbelieving government officials the world over, is that the internet comprises hundreds of thousands of networks, the vast majority run by private companies, that all voluntarily choose to connect together because of the inherent advantages in them doing so.
As soon as some external body attempts to enforce control over any part of that network, and so change accepted behavior, the rest of the network simply routes around it. And in order to be in that position in the first place, the government would have to assert mass ownership over privately-held property.
However, until an understanding of how the internet functions becomes general knowledge, we can expect to see more absolutist plans for internet control, particularly in the United States, where much of the hierarchical infrastructure currently resides.
[FACT comments: Many readers may not be aware that unsecured WiFi has resulted in criminal prosecutions when third-parties use them to download copyrighted content, mostly in the US.]
Finland mulls legalizing use of unsecured Wi-Fi
Lack of harm cited
The Register: June 12, 2010
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/12/finland_unsecured_wifi/
When it comes to the unauthorized use of open Wi-Fi networks, the Finnish government may say: If you can’t beat them, join them.
At least, that’s our interpretation of this badly garbled Google translation of a YLE.fi article. It says the country’s Ministry of Justice is investigating the decriminalization of using unsecured wireless networks because of the large number of unprotected access points and the widespread use of them by people without permission.
The government body also pointed to the difficulty of monitoring networks for unauthorized users and the lack of harm caused. What’s more, it’s not always clear when an unsecured network is intended to be used as a public hotspot and when it’s the product of an owner who has deemed it private but is too lazy or uninformed to bother encrypting its signal.
This sounds like a fairly commonsense approach, though Finnish citizens should probably be reminded that much of what they say and do over unsecured Wi-Fi networks is completely open to eavesdroppers in the next room or in roving wardriving cars.
[FACT comments: OSCE has also disclosed its analysis of the websites Turkey blocks. It seems unclear why Europe pays so much attention to Turkey’s censorship and does not examine the blocking conducted by EU member states.]
OSCE calls on Turkey to stop blocking YouTube
Reuters: June 22, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65L3MP20100622
Europe’s main human rights and security body told Turkey on Tuesday to stop blocking Google’s video-sharing website YouTube and thousands of other sites banned under its internet law.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the law, introduced in 2007, has been expanded to bar over 5,000 sites in the past two years and is severely damaging freedom of expression and information rights.
“I ask the Turkish authorities to revoke the blocking provisions that prevent citizens from being part of today’s global information society,” the OSCE’s media freedoms chief Dunja Mijatovic said in a statement.
Turkey initially passed the law to restrict access to pornography and other content it deemed harmful to children. The Vienna-based, 56-nation OSCE says the law has now been used to go far beyond that.
“Instead of allowing free access to the internet, new ways have emerged that can further restrict the free flow of information in the country,” Mijatovic said.
Turkey, an OSCE member, first started blocking YouTube in 2008 after it ruled that some videos posted on the site were insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern republic.
The Turkish government has also cited offences including child pornography and encouragement of suicide for blocking websites.
The OSCE said Mijatovic had written to Turkey‘s foreign minister to complain about new restrictions introduced earlier this month that have hampered access to other Google services such as its instant translation site and web traffic tracker.
Mijatovic said the alleged reason behind the block was an unsettled tax row between Turkish authorities and Google but that this matter was not covered in the original law.
Earlier this month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul used his Twitter page to condemn the ban on YouTube and some Google services. He said he had asked “responsible institutions for a solution. I asked for a change in regulations on merit.”
The president’s role in Turkey is largely ceremonial; decisions are taken by the prime minister and cabinet.
(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
