Around 8pmest every evening
Happy 2011!
Before we get to new stuff, I want to show two videos from CNN where the 8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media show up.
Transcript for this one is at Informationthread 20 :
Transcription at Informationthread 17 :
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Why EL PAÍS chose to publish the leaks :
1. The leak and its consequences.
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Nearly a month after The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and EL PAÍS began publishing the leaked information, we can draw at least one initial conclusion. Rather than sparking an acute state of supranational security crisis, as predicted by some observers, Washington and Europe's political elites have reacted with a mixture of irritation and embarrassed annoyance that is extremely informative as to the true scope and meaning of the WikiLeaks documents.
2. America, just doing its job.
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In the case of Spain, the homegrown version of this spin in much of the media was that the leaked cables are of little value, telling us nothing that we didn't already know, and thus not worth reporting on. This approach was picked up on by radio and television commentators and chat shows, where journalists would sit around dismissing the content of the cables, playing down their likely impact, and ignoring, either through sheer laziness - or for political reasons - the mounting tide of interest that the leaked documents were creating both at home and around the world.
3. Lying to the people.
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Tens of thousands of soldiers are fighting a war in Afghanistan that their respective leaders know is not winnable. Tens of thousands of soldiers are shoring up a government known around the world to be corrupt, but which is tolerated by those who sent the soldiers there in the first place. The WikiLeaks cables show that none of the Western powers believes that Afghanistan can become a credible nation in the medium term, and much less become a viable democracy, despite the stated aims of those whose soldiers are fighting and dying there. Few people have been surprised to learn that the Afghan president has been salting away millions of dollars in overseas aid in foreign bank accounts with the full cognizance of his patrons.
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We may have suspected our governments of underhand dealings, but we did not have the proof that WikiLeaks has provided. We now know that our governments were aware of the situations mentioned above, and, what is more, they have hidden the facts from us. I no longer think that commentators such as John Naughton were exaggerating when they compared the Karzai regime in Afghanistan with the corrupt and incompetent puppet government that the United States put in place in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. By the same token, Washington and NATO are seemingly becoming increasingly mired in a campaign bearing uncomfortable parallels with the war in Vietnam.
4. The incompetence of political elites.
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The incompetence of Western governments, and their inability to deal with the economic crisis, climate change, corruption, or the illegal war in Iraq and other countries has been eloquently exposed in recent years. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, we also know that our leaders are all too aware of their shameful fallibility, and that it is only thanks to the inertia of the machinery of power that they have been able to fulfill their democratic responsibility and answer to the electorate.
5. Assange and working procedures.
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It is also important to establish that at no time did Assange ask for money in return for providing access to the leaked documents, nor would EL PAÍS have agreed to such terms. The documents' reliability are beyond question, and nobody - not even opponents of their publication - have questioned their authenticity. The obstinate focus on Assange and his methods, the scrutiny of his motivations, and the repeated attempts to destroy his personal reputation all reflect the colossal lack of respect that US diplomats show for the laws, rules and procedures in the countries where they carry out their missions - beginning with Spain, if the published cables are anything to go by.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the important thing about the WikiLeaks revelations are the revelations themselves, despite the media choosing to focus a substantial amount of its coverage on supposed shady deals that the newspapers involved have cut with Assange; on the way that WikiLeaks is financed; the organization's alleged lack of transparency; and, worse still, on the allegations of sexual impropriety on his part.
- A question of ethics.
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It may yet emerge that the US Embassy broke the law in pursuing its country's perceived interests. But in any event, what the WikiLeaks cables show is an all-too close relationship between the US Embassy, Spanish government and judicial officials that can only be a threat to the democratic health of this country.
We have also seen how US diplomats in Berlin warned the German government of the serious consequences of bringing charges against CIA agents accused of kidnapping Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was abducted and taken to Afghanistan where he was tortured. El-Masri was then dumped in Albania when it was realized they had the wrong man. Kidnapping and torture are serious crimes. For US diplomats to pressure an ally to prevent suspects from being investigated is unacceptable, and trashes the idea that those diplomats are just doing their job.
7. The obligations of the media.
As Simon Jenkins of The Guardian wrote earlier this month, power hates to see the truth exposed. I would add that above all, power fears the truth when the truth doesn't fit its needs. I knew immediately after I received the first call from Assange that Friday in late November that EL PAÍS had a great story on its hands, and that it was our duty to publish it.
Then came the talks with other newspapers, weighing up the pros and cons, a careful evaluation of the likely consequences, and the subsequent doubts that kept many of us at the paper awake at nights. But despite our concerns, there was something that all of us involved in the process never doubted for an instant: we had a responsibility to the democracies that we live in to publish the story. Revealing the truth is the touchstone of true journalism, and the reason we get out of bed in the morning.
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It is the prerogative of governments, not the press, to bury secrets for as long as they can, and I will not argue with this as long as it does not cover up deceitful acts against citizens. But a newspaper's main task is to publish news, and to seek out news where it can find it. As I said in a recent online chat with EL PAÍS readers, newspapers have many obligations in a democratic society: responsibility, truthfulness, balance and a commitment to citizens. Our obligations definitely do not, however, include protecting governments and the powerful in general from embarrassing revelations.
Mason at FDL writes Manning And Assange Did Not Commit A Crime a bit here:
Although Daniel Ellsberg was indicted and prosecuted for theft, conspiracy, and violating the Espionage Act of 1917, for releasing the Pentagon Papers to 18 newspapers, including the New York Times, the trial judge dismissed the case against him in mid-trial on May 11, 1973, for governmental misconduct after the government claimed it had "lost" records of unauthorized and unlawful FBI wiretapping of Ellsberg’s conversations with a colleague named Morton Halperin. According to Wikipedia, the trial judge also revealed that he met twice during the trial with John Ehrlichman, who offered him the directorship of the FBI. Ehrlichman was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs.
Prior to Ellsberg’s trial, the SCOTUS upheld the right of the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers that Ellsberg had given them. New York Times vs. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). By a 6-3 majority, the Court rejected the Government’s argument that it had met its "heavy burden" of proving that the publication of the Pentagon Papers would likely cause a "grave and irreparable" danger to the United States and the American public such that it was entitled to an order prohibiting the New York Times from publishing the documents, notwithstanding that such an order would ordinarily be prohibited by the First Amendment as a prior restraint on the freedom of the press to publish information that the public had a right to know.
The Government’s argument was based on Section 793 of the Espionage Act of 1917, which provides:
"Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it."
I believe Manning is charged with violating this statute.
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Equally important, however, the Department of Justice cannot selectively decide to discriminate against and prosecute whistleblowers who disclose the truth about government misconduct to journalists while at the same time ignoring all of the other copious leaking that goes on at the highest levels of government service to get journalists to disseminate propaganda designed to mislead and confuse the public with false and deceptive information. The government should not be permitted to discriminate by selectively prosecuting the whistleblower who discloses the truth to a journalist while ignoring leakers who pass classified information to journalists to disseminate as propaganda. That’s the side of the whistleblower-journalist relationship that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the selective prosecution rule.
Scienceleaks!! Now this is what being open means! :
This venture was triggered by the many people complaining that they couldn't evaluate the 'arseniclife' paper because the journal Science only allowed access to its abstract, not to the full paper or its supplementary online materials. In response, Science temporarily opened access to people wiling to register at their site, but when the month ends the barrier will go right back up.
This access problem applies to the great majority of scientific papers. The public pays for the research, but the results are locked behind journal-subscription paywalls, accessible only to people with personal subscriptions or affiliated with major research libraries, or to those willing to pay $20-$40 for access to individual articles.
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So I've set up a web site called Science Leaks (actually a Blogger blog) to serve as a clearing house, providing links to the papers people want to read. Anyone who's looking for access to a paper can simply post the paper's information as a comment, and anyone who knows where a pdf is available can then post the link.
That leads us to these other sites: ScienceLeaks, GlobalLeaks, Crowdleak and Wikispooks
Bwahahahaha a Reagan and Bush historian warns us about Wikileaks.
M.I.A. releases 36min mixtape inpsired by Wikileaks called ViCKi LEEKX
As we are now in 2011, a reminder of what Wikileaks did in 2010:
surprising and lengthy CBS list of what WIkiLeaks has revealed so far, region by region, in the past month.
Glenn Greenwald: What Wikileaks revealed to the world in 2010
Tell me what's what.....