Eideard

The quarter-million confidential State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year have been public on the Web for months. But don’t tell the government. It is pretending otherwise.

Asked in April by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act for copies of 23 cables on Guantánamo, rendition and other matters, the State Department responded as if the confidential documents were still confidential.

Twelve of the cables “must be withheld in full” because they are classified as secret or contain important information, Alex Galovich, of the department’s Office of Information Programs and Services, wrote to the A.C.L.U. on Oct. 21. The other 11, he concluded, “may be released with excisions.”

The accompanying documents were indeed carefully redacted — here a sentence is removed, there a whole page. But the ambassadors’ confidences that the department was intent on protecting are, meanwhile, just a click away for anyone interested.

Ben Wizner, litigation director for the A.C.L.U.’s national security project, said the group’s request for documents that were already public was “mischievous” but also had a serious point: forcing the government officially to acknowledge counterterrorism actions that it has often hidden behind a cloak of classification.

“In part the request was to expose the absurdity of the U.S. secrecy regime,” Mr. Wizner said. But he said the government had repeatedly blocked lawsuits challenging counterterrorism programs by invoking what is called the state secrets privilege and telling judges that allowing the cases to proceed would endanger national security. “The only place in the world where torture and rendition cannot be discussed is U.S. courtrooms,” he said.

Both the State Department and the Justice Department declined to comment, saying the A.C.L.U.’s request is still in litigation.

We have a government run by idiots, designed to maintain the sacrosanctity of idiots, constructed to preserve the inviolability of idiots for all time.

This is not trademark or copyright law where failure to defend your design means the loss of protection and litigation. This is simple acknowledgement of reams of crap files that didn’t justify concealment in the first place – having been exposed to the public eye. Our government pretends it isn’t so.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Witness Against Torture outside FBI headquarters

The US is violating UN rules by refusing unmonitored access to the Army private who is accused of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks, the UN’s chief torture investigator has said.

UN special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez said the US had has broken rules by insisting on monitoring conversations with Private Bradley Manning.

Mr Mendez says he needs unrestricted access to Private Manning to do his job…

After being confined alone in a cell for 23 hours per day in a detention facility in Quantico in the state of Virginia, Private Manning was transferred to Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas in April.

Mr Mendez said the US had told him Mr Manning was being treated better now than when he was in Quantico.

But the UN investigator said the US must allow him to determine whether the conditions at Quantico that Pte Manning experienced amounted to “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

“For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid,” Mr Mendez said in a statement.

Mr Mendez said that because the US is a “strong supporter of the international human rights system“, the country’s actions “must seek to set the pace in good practices that enhance the role of human rights mechanisms, ensuring and maintaining unfettered access to detainees during enquiries”.

Living up to the standards we help set might actually prove we are a nation of law and justice – instead of the hypocrisy our government so often practices. A history shared by Republicans and Democrats, libertarians and liberals – so different in reality from pieces of paper and campaign slogans.

A fear of offending Muslims allowed extremists into Britain before the 2005 London Tube and bus bombings, a former Labour minister with close links to the intelligence services has admitted.

Kim Howells blamed “political correctness” for fostering a situation in which dozens of extremists being sent to fight the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.

The Daily Telegraph has disclosed this week how terrorist recruits from across Africa and the Middle East flocked to London to claim asylum.

According to leaked detainee files from the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph, at least 35 detainees were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated in Britain. Mr Howells, a former foreign office minister and chairman of the influential Commons intelligence and security committee, blamed “political correctness” which meant that the extremists and their views were not challenged…

Britain ignored repeated warnings to stop granting asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in other countries for terrorism offences before the 7/7 bombings.

According to the cable, also obtained by WikiLeaks, the politician asked: “Did the English consider the risks of allowing Londonistan to develop? The British thought that sheltering terrorists was a good solution, but they did not realise that one can never align oneself with the devil, and they did precisely that for years and years…”

Shake hands with the devil who wants to kill you.

Senior Democrat John Conyers of Michigan criticized Barack Obama Monday, hoping, Conyers said, to “make him a better president.”

Citing the troubled job market, rising energy costs, and turmoil in the Middle East, Conyers told reporters at the National Press Club: “We keep getting a longer and longer list of things he wanted to do, wished he could do more about, and is of course having a big problem.”

“The only thing that saves him, of course, is that there doesn’t seem to be anybody to run against him next year,” Conyers said.

After naming prospective challengers Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, among others, Conyers said he still supports Obama because “the alternative is unthinkable. I just want to make him a better president…”

Conyers said, “It is kind of amazing to me that there is still adopted, even in this administration, the attitude that military prowess will settle things down. And they rarely, if ever, do.”

He also responded to a question about the recent departure of a ranking State Department official who was critical of how the Pentagon is reportedly treating U.S. Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, a soldier suspected of a role in the WikiLeaks scandal. “I was not in agreement again with the president saying that he’s told Manning’s been treated — his confinement is okay, that he’s told everything is alright. I don’t think it’s all right.”

It’s almost a pleasantry to hear criticisms grounded in fact instead of the fuffarraw and agitprop we get from the KoolAid Party and corporate Republican hacks.

The American Left hasn’t been especially reluctant about criticising Obama for many of the issues he’s copped out on for one or another rationale. And, yes, Conyers certainly has it wired when he notes the alternatives are much worse.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

PJ Crowley, the official spokesman at the state department, has fallen on his sword after calling the treatment of Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the WikiLeaks files, “counterproductive and stupid”.

The resignation followed Crowley’s remarks to an MIT seminar last week about Manning’s treatment in military prison.

Crowley had said: “What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence.”

The remarks forced President Obama to address for the first time the issue of Manning’s handling at Quantico marine base in Virginia. Obama defended the way Manning is being treated, saying he had been reassured by the Pentagon that his confinement was appropriate.

In a resignation letter, Crowley said he took full responsibility for his remarks. Though he attacked the leaking of classified information, which he called “a serious crime under US law”, he stood by his earlier criticism of the Pentagon.

In words that could cause further difficulty for Obama, Crowley said his comments “were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

Obama promised transparency, adherence to the standards of the Geneva Code, bring our government up to the standards of our own constitutional and libertarian history. That has not happened.

Crowley simply stuck to the principles our elected officials said they stood for – and obviously don’t.

PayPal cut WikiLeaks’ online donation account Friday.

WikiLeaks violated its acceptable use policy, “which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” PayPal said in a statement.

WikiLeaks, which confirmed the change Saturday, said on its Twitter page that the action was based on U.S. pressure.

Why do I say funny? Because PayPal screwing with accounts is hardly news, ever.

Of course PayPal caved. About all you have to do to make PayPal nervous is to say that you don’t like green eggs and ham.

At 4 a.m. last Thursday, at the end of an all-night session, Iceland’s Parliament, the Althing, voted unanimously in favor of a package of legislation aimed at making the country a haven for freedom of expression by offering legal protection to whistle-blower Web sites like WikiLeaks, which helped to craft the proposal…

…Iceland hoped to become “the inverse of a tax haven,” by offering journalists and publishers some of the most aggressive protections for free speech and investigative journalism in the world. “They are trying to make everything opaque,” she said. “We are trying to make it transparent…”

The plan to make Iceland a world leader in journalism protection took shape in December with the assistance of two leaders of the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks.org, Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, whose publish-nearly-anything ideology has given them personal experience with news media laws around the globe…

Monroe Price, who runs a program in comparative media law at the University of Oxford, told The Independent in London, “As an exercise in aspirations, it’s a bold and important endeavor.” But, he added, “if it’s a significant issue like a national security question, then the charging jurisdiction will figure out ways of asserting its power.”

Does he really mean that bastions of Free Speech and Liberty like the UK and US might be willing to break or band the law in pursuit of preserving their political will?

You betcha!

Iceland intends to become a bastion for global press freedom under a package of laws proposed by opposition MPs to defend freedom of speech, and protect sources and fight libel tourism.

With the help of Wikileaks, the online whistleblowing site, the MPs have launched the Icelandic Modern Media Intiative, with the goal of turning the country into a global haven for investigative journalism.

The proposal, which has widespread backing among Iceland’s 51 MPs, is scheduled to come before the Althingi, Iceland’s parliament, next Tuesday, in the first step towards turning the idea into law.

“It is a good project for political change,” said Róbert Marshall, a member of the ruling Social Democratic Alliance party. “We have been through a difficult period and this is an initiative that can unite the whole political scene…”

The new legislation has won support from Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, the co-founders of the Wikileaks website…

Assange said that in his role as Wikileaks editor, he had been involved in fending off many legal attacks. “We’ve become good at it, and never lost a case, or a source, but we can’t expect everyone to go through the extraordinary efforts what we do. Large newspapers are routinely censored by legal costs. It is time this stopped. It is time a country said, enough is enough, justice must be seen, history must be preserved, and we will give shelter from the storm.”

Kind of warms the cockles of your heart to see a nation willing to commit its political will to freedom of speech – in practice – instead of settling for lip service from politicians, pundits and demagogues.

Having the longest-running democratic parliament in the western hemisphere certainly helps. Ain’t any filibusters in the Althing.