Updated: 04:04, Thursday February 23, 2012
WikiLeaks aims to release documents revealing that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is a US spy, as part of a ‘smear campaign’ to stop Sweden from extraditing founder Julian Assange to the United States, a Swedish daily reports.
The whistleblower website has threatened in an internal memo to publish a so far unknown diplomatic cable ‘where Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is shown to have been an informant for the United States since the 1970s,’ the Expressen tabloid reported on Wednesday, saying it had seen the WikiLeaks memo.
Bildt ‘will have to step down. This will be the end of his political career,’ an unnamed person with access to the unpublished diplomatic cable was quoted as saying.
Bildt himself reacted to the report on his official blog Wednesday, challenging WikiLeaks to publish ‘this in their opinion damning report.’
‘When that happens, this part of their planned ‘smear campaign’ will quickly fall to shreds,’ he wrote.
Assange, an Australian, is currently in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning on rape and sexual assault allegations, and WikiLeaks has long expressed concern that if he is sent to Sweden, Stockholm would quickly send him on to the US.
Washington is eager to lay hands on the WikiLeaks founder after the organisation’s publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic files, and according to Expressen the group’s ‘smear campaign’ against Sweden would be aimed at blocking Assange’s further extradition.
‘Julian Assange will most probably be freed from the sex crime suspicions, because that is just a trap,’ the unnamed person with insight into WikiLeaks told Expressen.
‘What Assange is afraid of is that he either will be forced to testify in the trial against the arrested soldier and suspected WikiLeaks source (for the leaked diplomatic cables), or that he himself will be arrested and handed over to a US court to be tried for espionage against the United States,’ he added.
The cable on Bildt reportedly shows that he first became an informant for the United States in 1973 and his original contact was none other than Republican strategist and former president George W Bush’s political guru Karl Rove.
WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson would meanwhile only confirm that ‘we have a document that shows the close relationship between Carl Bildt and Washington insiders.’
‘I am sure that this information will soon be available to the public,’ he told Expressen.
http://www.skynews.com.au/tech/article.aspx?id=721381
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology Sydney on February 17 for a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. The forum was organised by the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition.
Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the forum.
The transcript of Scott Ludlum’s address to the meeting is below.
* * *
Well, look at all of you. How many people are outside and couldn’t even get in? Hello also to the internet, because I think the internet is here: we’re livestreaming and people are certainly tweeting the hell out of the event. So if you are watching this from outside the building, we don’t even have room for people to sit on the floor so they’re spilling out the door.
I don’t know what time it is in London and if Julian or any of the others are watching, but maybe can we just give them a quick shout out: hello, you’ve got a lot of supporters down here in Sydney. [applause]
I wanted to start with a quote and I wanted to see if anyone here can tell me who said it. The quote is this: “We will tolerate dissent as long as it is ineffective.” [Crowd member says: “John Gorton”]
Really? I’ve been wanting to know for years and years. [laughter] John Gorton, thank you. Isn’t that interesting. I’ve had this rattling around in my head for ages because I think it’s a really beautiful interpretation of the way that power interprets us. We will tolerate dissent — march up and down, drop a banner — we’ll tolerate it.
But as soon as it actually starts to bite and it looks as though things might change, the tolerance starts running really thin and suddenly you find yourself under attack. I think what we are seeing here is a really interesting example of what to me feels like why we came, why we have packed out this room tonight.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology Sydney on February 17 a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. The forum was organised by the Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the forum.
The transcript of McQueen’s address to the meeting is below
* * *
Thank you all very much for being here. I won’t have to tell you why you are here, so I won’t attempt to do that.
I will, having been introduced as a historian, spend most of my time relating what is happening now to the things that have happened in the past, and why they relate to the ways in which information is operated.
It is the second time I’ve been on a panel with Christine Assange. We spoke together outside parliament house during the [US President Barack] Obama visit. She apologised for not being a public speaker.
I have to say to you should look forward to hearing her. It was a speech that would put any public figure in Australia to shame. Nothing that the leader of the opposition or the prime minister could say could carry not only the conviction but also the content, because what made the difference with Christine’s speech that morning was she had something to say.
We also had speeches from a group, surprisingly, of Congolese. And they came and spoke very passionately about the 9 million Congolese who had lost their lives in the 50 years since their fake independence was given. And they were there to protest about Obama and the US mining corporations in their country that they were holding responsible for that.
Many of you would have seen the excellent documentary by Raoul Peck on the life and murder of [the Congo’s first President Patrice] Lumumba. The other question is that if there had been a WikiLeaks then — and we might even find the answer in the future — is to what happened to the secretary general of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold when his plane crashed [in Africa in 1961].
We could also do with a WikiLeaks in Japan and get some sense of what is actually going on around the nuclear reactors there. If there had been a WikiLeaks there, then many of the disasters that have happened now, and those leaks and other problems that had arisen in the previous years, would have been public and there may have been more action taken to prevent the catastrophe that is still unfolding there.
We can do with a WikiLeaks here to tell us whether the banks are telling us the truth about the cost of borrowing money. The thing we all need a WikiLeaks for is to expose this abominable phrase “commercial-in-confidence”, which we all know means “corruption-in-the-closest”.
As I said, I’m not going to take up the particular legal issues about this. What I want to do is to go back and have a look at how things have changed in the last couple of hundred years.
Because throughout all of human history the 1% have struggled to make sure that the 99% couldn’t read or write at all, let alone read what WikiLeaks has revealed.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
This is the Second part in the series ”Sweden, Assange and Pinochet. On Torture crimes, Extradition lawyers, and Politically appointed Judges”
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- More than 200 lay judges have been the subject for criminal investigations in Sweden;
- Twenty-five convicted lay judges have continue act as judges in Swedish courts in the last years.
- Nearly half of the lay judges are retired individuals (over age 65). Have these lay-judge appointments been converted in a end-of-career chairs for politicians, by politicians?
Monday, February 13, 2012
“U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder does not prosecute U.S. torturers; he prosecutes
(Human-Rights Lawyer Jennifer Robinson)
This analysis reviews historic and political-background aspects in the extradition of political prisoners in Sweden, and revisits the risks as whether Swedish authorities would further extradite their prospective prisoner Julian Assange – already accused by high-profile U.S. politicians of being a terrorist.
I further remark in this analysis the pro-USA Swedish government’s refusal to process in 1998 the legal case that torture survivors filed for the extradition to Sweden of CIA-installed dictator Augusto Pinochet. The General was arrested then in London after a Spanish Court request by Judge Baltazar Garzon. My legal action against dictator Augusto Pinochet aimed to obtain his extradition to stand trial in Sweden, Norway or Europe for the torture and injury sequelae that forces under his direct command (DINA) inflicted to hundreds former political prisoners living in exile in Sweden, or the assassination of their family members.
Analysis & artwork by Marcello Ferrada-Noli Read the rest of this entry »
More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology Sydney on February 17 for a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. The forum was organised by the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition.
Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the forum.
The transcript of Jennifer Robinson’s address to the meeting is below.
* * *
I wanted to start this evening with a Jewish curse that someone told me recently: “May you be involved in a lawsuit in which you know you are right” [laughter].
No one knows the meaning of this curse any better than Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks. Assange has been accused of many, many things. Everything from being anti-Semitic to being a Mossad agent — how you could be the two at the same time I don’t know.
US presidential candidates in the current presidential race in the US have called for his assassination.
The current US vice-president has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. Can you imagine inserting into that sentence [Guardian editor] Alan Rusbridger is a “high-tech terrorist”? [New York Times editor] Bill Keller is a “high-tech terrorist”?
Our own prime minister [Julia Gillard] has accused him of illegal conduct — prematurely, prejudicially and prior to announcing a full-scale criminal investigation, which of course resulted in the outcome that the Australian Federal Police disagreed with her.
US government propaganda, shamefully echoed by our own prime minister, accused WikiLeaks of publishing in breach of US law. But they are wrong.
What Julian does with WikiLeaks is not only right, it is morally right, it is ethically right and, as I’ll explain this evening, it is legally right.
I was asked at a seminar earlier this week, how is it that you do what you do defending him? It must be so stressful. You are under surveillance. You have a lot of these threats made, which I don’t go into publicly.
And my response was, how do you think it is for him? Imagine what he is going through. And the reason he keeps doing what he does and does so bravely is because he knows he’s right.
His colleagues at WikiLeaks stand by him because they know he’s right. And I continue to defend him because I know he’s right.
More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology Sydney on February 17 for a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. The forum was organised by the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition.
Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the forum.
The transcript of Christine Assange’s address to the meeting, in conversation with Mary Kostakidis, is below
* * *
Mary Kostakidis: Christine, why don’t you begin with telling us just a little bit about your journey, what it’s been like.
Christine Assange: Initially, Julian and I were talking about the world, as we would, and what would change. What would it take to change the world? And Julian said to me I think there are only two things that will change the world, the way that it’s going, the way the power imbalance is and the suffering of people. Either a huge accident of some kind, a meteorite or another catastrophe, or technology.
And the technology was the dropbox for WikiLeaks. Initially, it was supposed to help the third world. That was why he was set up, to help the third world, to expose the dictatorships. But he had no idea he’d get a drop from America. That came as a complete surprise.
The time that everything really changed for me was August 21, 2010. I was sitting in bed watching a movie and the phone rang. At the end of the phone was a foreign voice. He said how do you feel about the fact that Julian has been charged with rape?
And my instinctive reaction was he wouldn’t do it. My second reaction was he’s been set up. That’s an instinctive reaction.
But for me to help Julian there had to be more than just a mothers’ instinct that he was set up. I knew I wouldn’t get the truth in the mainstream media. As others have pointed out its all Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. [laughter]
[Inaudible section]
And then I did what any journalist should be doing: I dug around. And it was like slipping through a wormhole — I think you’ve all seen Dr Who or Star Trek, I’m not quite sure where that’s from — but going through from one reality that I believed was this, through into a shadow reality of the corruption of power. It is a very frightening journey and I can understand why people don’t want to look at it. It’s akin to the abyss.
But WikiLeaks took the mask off power. And power is very, very angry.
But I think what’s happened is the reaction of power has exposed them more than even the cables. WikiLeaks has shone the light on these sorts of cockroaches. [applause] Read the rest of this entry »
Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the New York Times who partnered with Jullan Assange on several major WikiLeaks releases, has written another anti-Assange column for today’s Times. The two men have been feuding for about eighteen months now—going back to Keller’s shocking Julian-wears-dirty-socks revelations—and every time it dies now, Bill writes another blast. Maybe he couldn’t handle Assange’s guest spot on The Simpsons’ celebrated 500th episode last night.
Today’s column offers some justified criticism of Assange, albeit nothing new or original. I’ve offered my own criticism in the past and certainly Assange has increasingly become a soft target. But Keller, too, has been criticized and mocked by many for his assaults on Assange.
And there’s plenty of that today in response to his new column. Longtime Keller critic Glenn Greenwald, for example, tweeted, “Trying hard to ignore the typically sneering, typically banal Bill Keller column on WikiLeaks—prospects for success: quite low.”
The official WikiLeaks feed on Twitter weighed in: “The only explanation for Bill Keller’s bizarre attacks on Wikileaks, his former benefactor, is fear. The question is, of what?”
Leave it to Gawker to point out that while Keller disses Assange for watching his “autobiography” fall to a ranking of a lowly 1,288,313 at Amazon, he fails to note that the Times’s own WikiLeaks book presently sits at No. 2,539,088. Marcy Wheeler pointed out: “Bill Keller Blames Leak Arrests that Preceded WikiLeaks on WikiLeaks.”
I weighed in myself via Twitter early this morning, noting his ingenuous wish that he might one day make a little money off WikiLeaks—ignoring the fact that he already has a film option contract (typically in such cases the author gets a few thousand, or tens of thousands, out front, with much more later if the film gets made). I also poked fun at Keller’s mentioning his wife’s genius suggestion that Tilda Swinton play Assange in the movie—something that, oh, a thousand others, including myself, proposed at the very start.
Keller even airs more dirty laundry against Assange—this time, “underwear.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Hamilton Nolan – Feb 20, 2012
Former New York Times editor Bill Keller has spent the past year pursuing a weird personal crusade against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He continues, weirdly, and to the detriment of his own reputation. Likewise, we shall continue our crusade against Bill Keller, until all of the world’s readers have abandoned both of us, and we are merely talking to one another, like the cranks that we all are.
Here’s the thing, okay: Bill Keller until recently held what is arguably the most powerful editorial position in journalism. In the world. Now he is a New York Times columnist, which is still a pretty powerful platform. If you’re going to launch a crusade against something, at least make it something worthwhile. I mean, Nick Kristof bores the shit out of me, but at least he’s fighting sex trafficking and genocide in the process. Bill Keller also bores the shit out of me, and all he does is rant grumpily about various people on the internet who annoy him personally.
Not a good use of your platform, Bill Keller. Read the rest of this entry »
Makingispassion – 14 dec. 2011
Take action
Join Friends of WikiLeaks (FoWL) and defend Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, whistleblowers and free speech in your local area and abroad.
Write a letter to the new Attorney General Nicola Roxon; she has the power to change the handling of the Assange matter.
Contact Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard urging her to make undertakings that she will use her political discretion to prevent Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States.
Write a letter to your local MP urging them to put pressure on Julia Gillard to change her policy towards WikiLeaks and Assange. Send a copy of the letter to your MP to the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Attorney General: Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday 23 February, 5pm – 6pm
February 20, 2012 by wiseupforbm
Stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning in London as he is arraigned for Court Martial in the US. The Vigil will take place at the hour the arraignment is starting at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Meet in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Nearest tube: Bond Street.
Solidarity Vigil presently sponsored by London Catholic Worker, Veterans for Peace UK, WISE Up for Bradley Manning.
RSVP your attendance to Ciaron now or text 079 392 90576 from 21 Feb.
Short YouTube video of a previous vigil outside the US Embassy by British Veterans in solidarity with Bradley Manning below:
Posted by Hannah Vinter on February 20, 2012 at 3:19 PM
“Everybody is a journalist now”.
This phrase has been repeated so many times that it’s become a cliché, but that’s not to say that a consensus has been reached about what it really means for the news industry. How should news organisations approach material from citizen journalists? Should lines be drawn between professional and citizen media? How can the work of citizen journalists be effectively verified?
These were some of the questions raised at the session titled “Professional and “Citizen” Journalism Working Together after WikiLeaks” at the UNESCO conference on The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World, where several panellists suggested that collaboration between citizen and professional reporters was best model.
The benefits for news organisations using citizen reporting were highlighted by Riyaad Minty, Head of Social Media for Al Jazeera. Often, he said, citizen reporters can send in stories from areas that professional journalists have difficulty accessing, such as Syria, and can report on things that large news outlets fail to cover.
Even outside conflict situations, ordinary citizens can often file stories with great social relevance. Pierre Haski, co-founder of the French online news site Rue89, described a project at his publication named, Votre porte-monnaie au rayon X, where citizens wrote in describing their exact financial situation. This allowed readers with similar backgrounds and jobs to discuss and compare their earnings, and the series became “a dynamic way of talking about living standards today,” said Haski.
However, the discussion of citizen journalism was not all positive. Other panel members were concerned about the way citizen media helped the spread of unverified information. Sankarshan Thakur, Roving Editor at The Telegraph, New Delhi, said that although “citizen journalism is nothing to wish away, even less to ignore,” it was important to recognise “loose chat as loose chat, and not as information”. There has to be context to stories, he stated, as well as “rigor and fact-checking” that professionals can provide. Read the rest of this entry »
“That is NOT Terrorism” – with Senator Scott Ludlam
Posted on January 28, 2012 by CaTⓋ
Senator Scott LUDLAM – WIKILEAKS 2012 from CaTV on Vimeo.
http://thing2thing.com/?p=1820
Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia talks about Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, Occupy and the trouble with “expanding” definitions of terrorism. Skype link-up Perth/New York.
Throwing some kind of sticky liquid in front of a whaling boat; that’s not terrorism. Exposing material that is in the public interest; that’s not terrorism. Occupying a park or square because you are disgusted with corporate greed; that’s not terrorism!
