Wikileaks documenten #19: Langzaam het nieuwe jaar in

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http://www.citizenvox.org(...)orate-whistleblower/

In The Insider, Russell Crowe stars as a tobacco industry scientist turned corporate whistleblower. The Hollywood thriller was based on the true story of Jeffrey Wigand. While not always quite so dramatic, there are real risks to “doing the right thing.” Ralph Nader experienced this firsthand when he was targeted by automaker giant GE in 1965. Though decades have passed since GE hired a private investigator to unearth unflattering information about Nader, standing up to corporate power continues to take courage. Most recently, Public Citizen President Robert Weissman was profiled on a powerpoint presentation by the HBGary Group, a firm of computer hacks paid by the federal government with tax payer dollars to develop cyber spying mechanisms, which they in turn proffered to the law firm of the Chamber of Commerce to use against groups like Public Citizen. See DailyKos.

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) has just released, The Corporate Whistleblower’s Survival Guide. The guide details key strategies for effectively blowing the whistle, common “pitfall” practices to avoid, and key survival tips when considering exposing wrongdoing at a company.

This evening, April 21, GAP and Georgetown University’s Law School will be hosting an online event featuring a discussion between the authors and noted whistleblowers. Among those participating will be Wendell Potter, noted health insurance company whistleblower who authored Deadly Spin and exposed health care insurance strategies in putting profit over people’s lives. Additionally, Dr. Janet Chandler, who earned a Supreme Court landmark victory against hospital fraud with help from her then-lawyer Barack Obama, and Larry King, Three Mile Island cleanup whistleblower, will speak.

The event can be watched live by clicking here, starting at 5:15 p.m. EDT this Thursday, April 21. Call-in questions will be taken from around the country for this event. To call in to the event, dial 1-888-757-2790 (password: 871514).

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WikiLeaks-documenten over Guantánamo-gevangenen

Verschillende kranten hebben afgelopen nacht gepubliceerd over geheime documenten over de (ex-)gevangenen in de Guantánamo Bay-gevangenis. De Amerikaanse regering is ongelukkig met de publicatie.

De zevenhonderd bestanden, waar WikiLeaks gisteren beschikking over kreeg en waar onder meer The Washington Post onmiddellijk over publiceerde, bevatten nieuwe informatie over gevangenen in Guantanamo Bay.

Informatie over gevangenen

De bestanden, zogenaamde DAB’s (Detainee Assessment Briefs) beschrijven de mate waarin een gevangene over waardevolle informatie beschikt en of die gevangene een gevaar voor de Verenigde Staten zou vormen als diegene zou worden vrijgelaten.

Tot op dit moment zijn er 604 gevangenen vrijgelaten uit Guantánamo Bay, terwijl er nog 172 vastzitten. Hoewel de informatie in de DAB’s wellicht munitie kan vormen voor mensenrechtenorganisaties die altijd hebben beweerd dat er mensen met gebrek aan bewijs in ‘Gitmo’ worden vastgehouden, blijkt toch vooral dat een aantal gevangenen veel gevaarlijker is dan tot nu toe door verschillende media werd aangenomen.

Brein achter 9/11

De bestanden bevatten onder meer informatie over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, naar wordt aangenomen het brein achter de terroristische aanslagen op 11 september 2001, en over Abd al-Rhim al-Nashiri, die in de documenten opschept dat hij inmiddels als gevaarlijker werd gezien dan Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

NRC-correspondent Titia Ketelaar in Londen schreef veelvuldig over Guantánamo Bay. Volgens haar versterkt de vrijgekomen informatie het beeld dat we al hadden van de situatie.

Sommige gevangenen zitten daar al sinds februari 2002 vast, zonder rechtszaak. De weinige informatie die we tot nu toe hadden kwam bijvoorbeeld uit FBI-dossiers die een paar jaar geleden lekten. Daaruit bleek vooral hoe de gevangenen werden behandeld. Verder heeft persbureau AP in 2006 via de rechter voor elkaar gekregen dat de namen van de gevangenen bekend werden gemaakt. Sindsdien is wel gezegd wie er zijn opgepakt, maar niet wie er werd vrijgelaten: daar hebben we nu ook een beter beeld van.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison

• Innocent people interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts
• Children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held
• 172 prisoners remain, some with no prospect of trial or release
• Read the original documents

More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba.

The US military dossiers, obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian, reveal how, alongside the so-called "worst of the worst", many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment.

The 759 Guantánamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there.

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

The old man was transported to Cuba to interrogate him about "suspicious phone numbers" found in his compound. The 14-year-old was shipped out merely because of "his possible knowledge of Taliban...local leaders"

The documents also reveal:

• US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

Interrogators were told to regard links to any of these as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity.

• Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantánamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide.

• A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton, Jamal al-Harith, was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques. The US military tried to hang on to another Briton, Binyam Mohamed, even after charges had been dropped and evidence emerged he had been tortured.

• US authorities relied heavily on information obtained from a small number of detainees under torture. They continued to maintain this testimony was reliable even after admitting that the prisoners who provided it had been mistreated.

The files also show that a large number of the detainees who have left Guantanamo were designated "high risk" by the camp authorities before their release or transfer to other countries.

The leaked files include guidance for US interrogators on how to decide whether to hold or release detainees, and how to spot al-Qaida cover stories. One warns interrogators: "Travel to Afghanistan for any reason after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 is likely a total fabrication with the true intentions being to support Usama Bin Laden through direct hostilities against the US forces."

Another 17-page file, titled "GTMO matrix of threat indicators for enemy combatants", advises interrogators to look out for signs of terrorist activity ranging from links to a number of mosques around the world, including two in London, to ownership of a particular model of Casio watch.

"The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bombmaking training courses in Afghanistan," it states.

The inclusion of association with the ISI as a "threat indicator" in this document is likely to pour fuel on the flames of Washington's already strained relationship with its key regional ally.A number of the detainee files also contain references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting al-Qaida.

Obama's inability to shut Guantánamo has been one of the White House's most internationally embarrassing policy failures. The files offer an insight into why the administration has been unable to transfer many of the 172 existing prisoners from the island prison where they remain outside the protection of the US courts or the prisoner-of-war provisions of the Geneva conventions.

The range of those still held captive includes detainees who have been admittedly tortured so badly they can never be successfully tried, informers who must be protected from reprisals, and a group of Chinese Muslims from the Uighur minority who have nowhere to go.

One of those officially admitted to have been so maltreated that it amounted to torture is prisoner No 63, Maad al-Qahtani. He was captured more than nine years ago, fleeing from the site of Osama bin Laden's last stand in the mountain caves of Tora Bora in 2001. The report says Qahtani, allegedly one of the "Dirty 30" who were Bin Laden's bodyguards, must not be released: "HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies." The report's military authors admit his admissions were obtained by what they call "harsh interrogation techniques in the early stages of detention". But otherwise the files make little mention of the widely-condemned techniques that were employed to obtain "intelligence" and "confessions" from detainees such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and prolonged exposure to cold and loud music.

The files also detail how many innocents or marginal figures swept up by the Guantánamo dragnet because US forces thought they might be of some intelligence value.

One man was transferred to the facility "because he was a mullah, who led prayers at Manu mosque in Kandahar province, Afghanistan … which placed him in a position to have special knowledge of the Taliban". US authorities eventually released him after more than a year's captivity, deciding he had no intelligence value.

Another prisoner was shipped to the base "because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver".

The files also reveal that an al-Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years, partly in order to be interrogated about the Arabic news network.

His dossier states that one of the reasons was "to provide information on … the al-Jazeera news network's training programme, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including the network's acquisition of a video of UBL [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL".

The Guantánamo files are among hundreds of thousands of documents US soldier Bradley Manning is accused of having turned over to the WikiLeaks website more than a year ago.

The documents were obtained by the New York Times and shared with the Guardian and National Public Radio, which is publishing extracts, having redacted information which might identify informants.

A Pentagon spokesperson said: "Naturally we would prefer that no legitimately classified information be released into the public domain, as by definition it can be expected to cause damage to US national security. The situation with the Guantánamo detention facility is exceptionally complex and releasing any records will further complicate ongoing actions."

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Guantánamo files: US agencies fought internal war over handling of detainees

Professional investigators who deplored torture were repeatedly sidelined as CIA and soldiers with little training took harsh steps

One of the biggest and most explosive clashes at Guantánamo Bay has been fought not between guards and prisoners but between US interrogators, the leaked files reveal.

It was a fundamental clash of cultures: between those who stuck rigidly to US law and those who, in the frightening post-9/11 world, adopted techniques from a US manual detailing psychological and physical torture used by China during the Korean war.

In theory there was – and still is – a simple command structure at Guantánamo, run by the commander of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO in military jargon). But in reality there were lots of agencies at the naval base in Cuba, sometimes working together but more often at odds and at times barely speaking to one another.

On the ground alongside the JTF GTMO interrogators were the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF), an elite unit, many of whose members had a law enforcement background and opposed the use of harsh methods.

Also in the mix was the CIA, which George Bush made the lead agency in spite of its failure to stop 9/11. Jostling for a piece of the action were the FBI and the Behavioural Science Consultation Team, a group of psychiatrists and psychologists set up by the defence department.

The files confirm that interrogators were also present from foreign intelligence services.

The battles being fought on the ground mirrored the debate and power plays in Washington, as figures such as Bush, his vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell argued over the ethics and legality of what was happening at the naval base.

The first detainees arrived at Guantánamo on 11 January 2002. Rumsfeld ordered the US Southern Command – based in Miami and responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean – to take responsibility for guarding the detainees and oversee interrogation. Southern Command on 16 February gave this role to JTF-170, which eventually became JTF GTMO.

Evidence of the in-fighting among the agencies can be found towards the end of the detainee reports, in which the camp commander assesses the risk posed by a prisoner and his intelligence value. The commander makes a recommendation whether to release, keep in detention or send to another government for imprisonment.

The final paragraph deals with "co-ordination" between the agencies and it is here that the friction surfaces. The commander often reports that CITF "defers" to JTF GTMO. "Defers" sounds dull and bureaucratic but it is a loaded word in the context of Guantánamo, reflecting a profound difference in interrogation techniques and conclusions.

Typical is a report on Saleh Abdall al-Oshan, a Saudi who was among the first to arrive at Guantanamo, in 21 January 2002. The JTF GTMO assessment, written in 2004, was that "this detainee is a member of al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network". But the commander added: "CITF assessed the detainee as a low risk on 22 March 2004. In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO's assessment that the detainee poses a medium to high risk."

Time and time again CITF is at odds with JTF GTMO but forced to defer.

CITF, whose members are drawn from the army, navy and air force, is part of the defence department and is based at Fort Belvoir, near Washington. Its approach to interrogation was to try to befriend prisoners, chat to them over tea, win their confidence and build up information gradually. Some members of the team eventually went public, in television interviews and Senate hearings, saying that harsh interrogation techniques made cases unprosecutable and were counterproductive in any case, pushing detainees into cocoons of silence.

By contrast, JTF GTMO is made up of troops from a traditional military background. They saw their mission as primarily intelligence-gathering rather than constructing a legal case. Again, in the case of Oshan, the commander's report emphasises he was transferred to Guantánamo in hopes of providing intelligence. "Detainee may provide information on the refugee camp outside Spin Buldok, AF(Afghanistan), and Islamic presence in the Philippines," the report says.

Over and over again the stress in the reports is on intelligence-gathering.

Some of the troops transferred to JTF Guantánamo had no background in interrogation. Among the first were a group from Fort Huachuca, Arizona. They had had six weeks of training in how to withstand torture – very different from conducting interrogations.

The military used harsh techniques abhorred by the CITF and the CIA went even further. It was responsible for one of the most notorious cases at Guantánamo, the waterboarding of the self-confessed al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The CIA had relative independence. It ran a secret camp, Camp Seven, whose existence only became public late on, in 2008.

Also operating on the island was the FBI, which approached interrogations in much the same way as the CITF and opposed waterboarding and similar methods. Jane Mayer, in her book The Dark Side, records one interrogation in which the FBI claimed to have been getting "phenomenal" information, only to be pushed out by a CIA team. The FBI, fearful of being implicated in something potentially illegal, fled the scene.

The role of psychologists and psychiatrists has raised medical ethical questions, given that some participated in interrogations. One of the files shows a behavioural science team winning a rare victory over the JTF GTMO in December 2003. The behavioural team assessed a detainee as "high threat" while the JTF GTMO had him as "medium threat". JTF GTMO deferred to the behavioural team.

As if the mix was not volatile enough, also on the island base at various times were intelligence officers from other countries. One of the files records that "from 3 to 10 August 2002 Pakistani intelligence officers interrogated" a detainee. Adding to the confusion, another file claims that another detainee, described by JTF GTMO as a "high risk", was also a Pakistani intelligence agent.

The early JTF GTMO commanders included Major General Michael Dunlavey and Major General Geoffrey Miller, whose names appear at the bottom of many of the detainee reports. They came under a lot of pressure from Washington to produce results after a first year that yielded little intelligence.

Miller is controversial, having served at Guantánamo from November 2002 to August 2003 before being was transferred to run prisons in Iraq. He has been accused of introducing tactics used at Guantánamo to Iraq, blurring the line between guard duties and interrogation, a move that could have contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal.

The chain of command from Guantánamo to Washington is illustrated by a request sent by Miller's predecessor Dunlavey in 2002 which, according to a Senate investigation, asked for authorisation to use harsher interrogation techniques. It went first to General James Hill, the commander of US Southern Command, the recipient of the detainee reports. Hill forwarded it to General Richard Myers, who was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The chairman of the joint chefs is the highest-ranking military officer in the US and advises the president and defence secretary.

There was some resistance to such requests in Washington, from figures such as Powell and, to a lesser extent, Rice. But the dominant mood was in favour of harsh methods. Cheney is unrepentant: in a rare public foray he made a speech in 2008 in Washington denying that waterboarding constituted torture and insisting that the information obtained from interrogations saved lives. That line is repeated by Rumsfeld in his autobiography published this year, and Bush in his in November.

"No doubt the procedure was tough but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm," Bush wrote.

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Bradley Manning's jail conditions improve dramatically after protest campaign

Switch of WikiLeaks whistleblower suspect from maximum security jail means more rights and liberties in runup to trial

The conditions under which the WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning is being detained in military prison have vastly improved in the wake of a sustained campaign against his earlier treatment, which some said amounted to torture.

Since Manning was transferred from the Quantico marine base in Virginia to Fort Leavenworth on 20 April his detention regime has changed dramatically.

He has been switched from maximum security to medium custody, which affords him many more rights and liberties, and he is no longer being held under a prevention of injury watch that imposed harsh conditions.

The new regime has been revealed in a blog post from Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, who is handling the US soldier's forthcoming court martial.

The prisoner, who worked as an army intelligence specialist in Iraq, has been charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of a huge trove of state secrets to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

Under the old prevention order, Manning was forced to strip naked and wear just a smock at night, he had no bedding and was not permitted any personal items in his cell. He was kept locked up in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in a windowless cell, and allowed only to walk in a yard on his own for that final hour.

In Fort Leavenworth, by contrast, he has a large window that lets in natural light. He has a normal mattress and bedding and his clothes are not removed at night.

Manning can have personal objects in his cell, including books and letters from family and friends, as well as legal documents relating to his case. He can write whenever he wants.

His new life of detention is also considerably less lonely. There are five other pretrial prisoners and Manning spends much of the day in their company. His cell is connected to a common area used by four of the detainees with a television and exercise machine, table and shower area.

The improvement in Manning's prison life is testament to the power of a sustained campaign by his supporters and politicians to end what was deemed virtual torture against him.

The Pentagon had been flooded with emails and lobbied by representatives such as Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman from Ohio who took up Manning's cause.

The UK embassy in Washington has also been involved after the Guardian revealed that Manning is a British citizen by dint of his mother being Welsh.

Kucinich said the lawyer's account of Manning's new conditions revealed a dramatic change "that can only be attributed to the public campaign that brought great pressure on the department of defence".

But Manning's more relaxed treatment also raises serious questions about why he was treated so brutally for the nine months in which he was held at Quantico. When Barack Obama was asked about the case in March, he said he had been assured by the Pentagon that Manning's treatment was appropriate.

Kucinich said he would continue to press through Congress for answers to a number of questions: "Why was Manning treated the way he was in Quantico that was similar to torture? Who was responsible for that treatment, and what's going to be done to ensure those individuals are held to account?"

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Julian Assange krijgt zelfde vredesprijs als Mandela en Dalai Lama

WikiLeaksoprichter Julian Assange heeft vandaag een prestigieuze onderscheiding ontvangen tijdens een ceremonie in Londen. De Australiër kreeg de gouden medaille van de Sydney Peace Foundation, een vredesprijs die de afgelopen veertien jaar pas vier keer werd uitgereikt.

Onder eerdere prijswinnaars waren de Zuid-Afrikaanse oud-president en anti-apartheidsactivist Nelson Mandela en de geestelijke leider in ballingschap van Tibet, de Dalai Lama.

Assange verzet zich op dit moment tegen een uitleveringsverzoek, dat is ingediend door Zweden in verband met een zedenzaak in dat land, waarin hij is aangemerkt als verdachte. De Verenigde Staten willen Assange ook, wegens de publicatie van honderdduizenden geheime overheidsdocumenten. Sommige Amerikaanse politici hebben ervoor gepleit dat WikiLeaks de status krijgt van een internationale terroristische organisatie.


Uitdaging
De jury prijst Assange en WikiLeaks juist omdat zij een uitdaging vormen voor 'eeuwenoude praktijken van geheimhouding door overheden' en door op te komen voor het recht van mensen om hier kennis van te nemen. 'Wij denken dat jij en WikiLeaks iets hebben voortgebracht, dat een waterscheiding inhoudt voor de journalistiek en in de vrijheid van informatie en in potentie van de politiek', zei professor Stuart Rees, directeur van de Sydney Peace Foundation, tegen Assange. De stichting wordt gesteund door de universiteit van Sydney en door het gemeentebestuur van deze miljoenenstad.

Rees uitte harde kritiek op de Australische regering en op Amerikaanse politici. Australië zou Washington steun geven terwijl de Amerikanen zich zouden gedragen als een 'totalitaire staat'. De jury van de vredesprijs is 'ontzet over het gewelddadige gedrag van belangrijke politici in de VS'.

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Op donderdag 12 mei 2011 10:15 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:
Assange wordt gekker en gekker:

[..]

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Why I blew the whistle about Palestine

Israel's attack on Gaza and the disastrous 'peace talks' compelled me to leak what I knew

Ziyad Clot
The Guardian, Saturday 14 May 2011

In Palestine, the time has come for national reconciliation. On the eve of the 63rd
commemoration of the Nakba – the uprooting of Palestinians that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948 – this is a long-awaited and hopeful moment. Earlier this year the release by al-Jazeera and the Guardian of 1,600 documents related to the so-called peace process caused deep consternation among Palestinians and in the Arab world. Covering more than 10 years of talks (from 1999 to 2010) between Israel and the PLO, the Palestine papers illustrated the tragic consequences of an inequitable and destructive political process which had been based on the assumption that the Palestinians could in effect negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation.

My name has been circulated as one of the possible sources of these leaks. I would like to clarify here the extent of my involvement in these revelations and explain my motives. I have always acted in the best interest of the Palestinian people, in its entirety, and to the full extent of my capacity.

My own experience with the "peace process" started in Ramallah, in January 2008, after I was recruited as an adviser for the negotiation support unit (NSU) of the PLO, specifically in charge of the Palestinian refugee file. That was a few weeks after a goal had been set at the Annapolis conference: the creation of the Palestinian state by the end of 2008. Only 11 months into my job, in November of that year, I resigned. By December 2008, instead of the establishment of a state in Palestine, I witnessed on TV the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli army.

My strong motives for leaving my position with the NSU and my assessment of the "peace process" were clearly detailed to Palestinian negotiators in my resignation letter dated of 9th November 2008.

The "peace negotiations" were a deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU. Far from enabling a negotiated and fair end to the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population, as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far from preserving the land on which to build a state, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, was instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions among Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the seven million Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months in Ramallah confirmed that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.

Tragically, the Palestinians were left uninformed of the fate of their individual and collective rights in the negotiations, and their divided political leaderships were not held accountable for their decisions or inaction. After I resigned, I believed I had a duty to inform the public.

Shortly after the Gaza war I started to write about my experience in Ramallah. In my 2010 book, Il n'y aura pas d'Etat Palestinien (There will be no Palestinian State), I concluded: "The peace process is a spectacle, a farce, played to the detriment of Palestinian reconciliation, at the cost of the bloodshed in Gaza." In full conscience, and acting independently, I later agreed to share some information with al-Jazeera specifically with regard to the fate of Palestinian refugee rights in the 2008 talks. Other sources did the same, although I am unaware of their identity. Taking these tragic developments of the "peace process" to a wider Arab and western audience was justified because it was in the public interest of the Palestinian people. I had – and still have – no doubt that I had a moral, legal and political obligation to proceed accordingly.

Today, I am relieved that this first-hand information is available to Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, in Israel and in exile. In a way, Palestinian rights are back in their holders' possession and the people are now in a position to make enlightened decisions about the future of their struggle. I am also glad that international stakeholders to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can access these documents. The world can no longer overlook that while Palestinians' strong commitment to peace is genuine, the fruitless pursuit of a "peace process" framed according to the exclusive conditions of the occupying power leads to compromises which would be unacceptable in any other region of the globe.

Finally, I feel reassured that the people of Palestine overwhelmingly realise that the reconciliation between all their constituents must be the first step towards national liberation. The Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinians living in exile have a common future. The path to Palestinian self-determination will require the participation of all in a renewed political platform.

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Twitter users and the courts go to war over footballer's injunction


Social networks accused of making 'an ass of the law' as injunction spirals into online battle over freedom of speech

Attempts to identify a famous footballer hiding behind a privacy injunction have spiralled into an online battle over freedom of speech, as internet users responded to high court action by repeatedly naming him on Twitter.

The high court granted a search order against the US-based microblogging site on Friday as the lord chief justice, Lord Judge, warned that "modern technology was totally out of control" and called for those who "peddle lies" on the internet to be fined. The attempt to compel Twitter to identify those responsible for the breaches comes after a number of its users earlier this month purported to reveal the name of the player who allegedly had an affair with the model Imogen Thomas.

The footballer's legal team began its action in London on Wednesday. There is a suspicion that a media company may be linked to the postings on Twitter, which were put up nearly two weeks ago.

But the name of the footballer was spreading even more rapidly across Twitter in defiance of the court injunction, setting the stage for a confrontation between the judiciary and cyberspace.

Earlier Lord Judge – welcoming a juridical report on superinjunctions – said readers placed greater trust in the content of traditional media than those "who peddle lies" on websites.

He urged that ways be found to curtail the "misuse of modern technology", in the same way that those involved with online child pornography were pursued by the police.

"Are you really going to say that someone who has a true claim for protection perfectly well made has to be at the mercy of modern technology?" he asked.

The lawsuit lists the defendants as "Twitter Inc and persons unknown".

The "persons unknown" are described as those "responsible for the publication of information on the Twitter accounts".

Lawyers have applied for a court order that could force Twitter to hand over the name, email address and IP address of the person behind the account, the Guardian understands.

The orders – known as a Norwich Pharmacal orders – are commonly used in illegal filesharing cases.

The Guardian understands that the claim form, filed to the high court by the footballer's legal team, will not be made public until next week. Earlier this month, an unknown person or individuals published on a Twitter account the names of various people who had allegedly taken out gagging orders to conceal sexual indiscretions.

The account rapidly attracted more than 100,000 followers.

Twitter said: "We are unable to comment." The London-based law firm representing the footballer had also not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

Twitter and other social networks were accused of making "an ass of the law" by the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and politicians after a number of celebrities with injunctions were allegedly exposed online.

The socialite Jemima Khan was among those alleged on Twitter to have obtained an injunction.

Khan described as a "bloody nightmare" rumours suggesting falsely that she had obtained a gagging order to prevent publication of "intimate photos" of herself and the TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson.

Twitter has in the past said that it "strive[s] not to remove tweets on the basis of their content", but that it would remove "illegal tweets and spam".

Previous defamation claims against the search engine Google failed on the grounds that it is not a publisher and not responsible for the contents of the blogs and articles listed in its search results.

Richard Hillgrove, the owner of Hillgrove PR, which provides advice to celebrities, said that Twitter needed to be made as accountable as any other medium.

"It has gone from 'the back bedroom' to mainstream medium.

"Celebrities are being held to account if they Tweet commercial interests. It works both ways," he said.

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US put pressure on Saudi Arabia to let women drive, leaked cables reveal

Documents given to WikiLeaks show Obama administration pushed Saudis to give female citizens more rights

The Obama administration has been quietly putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to allow women to drive, according to leaked US embassy cables.

But the jailing of woman protester Manal al-Sharif after she posted an online video of herself at the wheel of a car in Khobar reveals the extent of US diplomatic failure regarding the ban.

The cables, part of the trove allegedly given to WikiLeaks by the US soldier Bradley Manning, reveal previously unreported clashes over women's rights.

Dispatches from Riyadh describe Saudi Arabia as "the world's largest women's prison". Those words are a quote from one female campaigner US diplomats have been in contact with, Wajeha al-Huwaider.

She too posted a video on YouTube in 2008 of herself driving. Saying millions of Saudi women were prisoners in their homes, she challenged male control over work and travel.

She regularly tries to take a taxi to neighbouring Bahrain: "Al-Huwaider is divorced which means under Saudi law her ex-husband or her father or a brother would need to give her permission to leave the country.

"Although she holds a valid passport, every time she tries to leave ... she is stopped at the border to Bahrain and turned around."

The billionaire tycoon Prince Waleed, a Saudi royal, assured a visiting Democrat congressman in July 2009 that King Abdullah did support women's rights, the embassy noted optimistically. The driving ban was reportedly about to be overturned.

Speaking at his 99-storey Kingdom Tower in Riyadh, Waleed said the ban was merely a "demeaning" tribal custom and that he "relished relating his run-ins with the kingdom's religious conservatives. He was involved with the first public showings of films in the kingdom in many years. His wife has openly requested that women be allowed to drive. He supports French president Sarkozy's campaign against women wearing coverings hiding their faces."

Abdullah appointed the country's first woman deputy minister in 2009 and opened "with much fanfare" a mixed-sex science university, in front of foreign dignitaries including Prince Andrew.

The embassy noted approvingly "several subtle, symbolic gestures ... Saudi men and women, many of whom did not wear the face-covering niqab, mingled freely with international attendees throughout the ceremony. Male and female students stood side by side on stage for an emotive reading of a poem. The ceremony was interspaced with a movie showing (uncovered) young girls and boys studying together".

But there was an immediate backlash. Saad Nasser al-Shithri, a cleric from the council of senior scholars, appeared on the Saudi religious TV channel to defy the king.

He denounced "mixing of the sexes" and "the teaching of deviant ideas such as evolution".

Abdullah was forced to sack him, but embassy contacts warned privately that Al-Shithri was being regarded as a hero by unemployed young Saudis, who resented foreign students getting advantages, and by reactionary clerics who feared a plot to impose western values.

Another cleric, Sheikh Salman al-Duwaysh, publicly attacked "mixing with women on the basis of claiming to educate them and to open the field for them to undertake jobs for which they were not created".

He said such women had "abandoned their basic duties such as housekeeping, bringing up children ... and replaced this by beautifying themselves and wantonness".

The embassy was refused consent for a US "rhythm and oratory duo" called Teasley and Williams to play to a mixed audience at the university.

But the duo did appear at the Riyadh literary society before "an unprecedented mixed-gender audience (mixed by Saudi standards – the handful of women who attended sat in a screened-off block of seats across the aisle from the men). Nonetheless, the fact that women were even invited to a musical performance with men in Riyadh is remarkable".

Obama's envoy, Richard Erdman, privately scolded Saudi ministers to little effect.

He "pointedly" told the notoriously reactionary interior minister, Prince Naif, that "no nation could prosper without the intellectual contributions and talent of all its citizens ... (ie women)".

He said the same to the deputy foreign minister, who responded wryly that "customs were a hard nut to crack".

In a dispatch headed Women Need Not Apply, US diplomats recorded that US-educated Prince Mansur, the minister of municipal affairs, firmly rejected the notion that political development required the participation of women saying issues such as women driving were "not fundamental to our society".

According to the US diplomats, the driving ban is in fact something of a charade which "dates from a 1991 fatwa issued by the late grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Baz. The grand mufti claimed that allowing women to drive would result in public 'mixing' of men and women, put women into dangerous situations because they could be alone in cars, and therefore result in social chaos".

The cable continued: "Women drive anyway: there are, in fact, many instances in which Saudi women defy the prohibition.

"Women drive on private property such as desert farms or residential compounds beyond reach of police.

"Embassy contacts and media report that in rural areas women routinely drive out of necessity, without being stopped.

"Al-Hayat newspaper reported 16 February ... a woman driving in some Saudi villages is considered normal."

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW! The “Wikileaks Truck Driver” Clark Stoeckley – Creator of “Wikileaks Top Secret Mobile Collection Unit”

– Artist, Activist, Entertainer and Wiki-Prankster

“Though I am not connected to Wikileaks, I believe we are all Wikileaks.”

Wikileaks Top Secret Mobile Information Collection Unit

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Assange leeft als 'een gekooid dier' (video)

Julian Assange leeft een sober en gecontroleerd bestaan. Hij wordt behandeld als een veroordeelde crimineel, vinden zijn sympathisanten. Zij maakten een video van zijn eerste half jaar onder huisarrest: 191 dagen zonder aanklacht.

Assange staat momenteel onder huisarrest in Groot-Brittannië. Daar buigt een rechter zich over een Zweeds uitleveringsverzoek. Justitie in Zweden verdenkt Assange van seksueel misbruik van twee vrouwen. Omdat hij geen vast adres in Groot-Brittanië had, nam de WikiLeaks-oprichter zijn intrek bij Vaughan Smith, een excentrieke Engelsman met een groot landhuis. Hij moet zich iedere dag melden bij het politiebureau in Norfolk nabij het landhuis, heeft dikke enkelbanden om die zijn bewegingen monitoren en hij moet iedere dag voor 22.00 uur terug in het huis zijn.

Impact
In een 5 minuten durende video, die de Britse krant The Telegraph gisteren publiceerde, is te zien hoeveel impact het op het leven van Assange heeft. Zijn assistente Sarah Harrison zegt: 'Ik ben Brits, en ben altijd trots geweest op ons rechtssysteem. Maar dit is gewoon verkeerd. Deze man is niet eens officieel aangeklaagd en wordt behandeld als een gekooid dier.' Joseph Farrell, ook betrokken bij WikiLeaks, zegt: 'Hij wordt behandeld als een veroordeelde crimineel.'

Op een gegeven moment willen ze filmen als het bedrijf dat de elektronische enkelbanden komt controleren. Hierop vertrekken de werknemers omdat ze niet willen worden gefilmd, en krijgt Assange meteen een waarschuwing via zijn advocaat.

Ook zijn er volgens Vaughan Smith nummerplaatcamera's bij de drie ingangen van zijn landhuis geplaatst, die er eerst nog niet waren.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange releases video blog of his house arrest

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Op dinsdag 21 juni 2011 17:28 schreef -Strawberry- het volgende:
Waarom komt wikileaks nooit meer in het nieuws? Er zou toch nog heel veel gelekt worden?

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Haiti: WikiLeaks reveals contractor 'gold rush' after quake

Disaster capitalists flocked to Haiti in a “gold rush” for contracts to rebuild the country after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, wrote the current US ambassador Kenneth Merten in a secret Febuary 1, 2010 cable obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Haiti Liberte.

“THE GOLD RUSH IS ON!” Merten headlined a section of his 6pm situation report ― or Sitrep ― back to Washington.

“As Haiti digs out from the earthquake, different [US] companies are moving in to sell their concepts, products and services,” he wrote. “President [Rene] Preval met with Gen Wesley Clark Saturday [on January 30] and received a sales presentation on a hurricane/earthquake resistant foam core house designed for low income residents.”