US Intell planned to destroy Wikileaks

[Peter Lemkin]

Something[s] very strange and unusual are going on here/there. A man who maybe had consentual sex with a woman and during which the condom broke is being asked for nearly 1/4 million dollars bail; having to wear a ankle bracelet, surrender his passport and report to the police twice per day and not be out at night......am I the only one who senses something askew here?!?!?...so askew as to endanger freedoms for all on earth?!?!?! :five::bandit:

the past is prologue.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhIIYp8OSuQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGTZNpUD9tk

[Peter Presland]

The whole "control of Wikileaks' saga just gets stranger and stranger. This from a comment on Aagirfan's blog:

Blackwatch left us this comment:The man that Assange may be staying with over Xmas - Vaughn Lockhart Smith - has quite an illustrious right-wing history (even more so than Jemima Goldsmith).
His family go back to Count James Lockhart, whose daughter Maria married John Smith of Ellingham Hall.
Ellingham is where Assange will be staying.
James was also in the Grenadier Guards.
His father and grandfather also have reputable military histories - as befits anybody entering Mi6. (see Lt.Col. Henry Lockhart Smith - in Landed Gentry)
Interesting to see Litvineko and Boris Berezovsky as past members of Vaughn's Frontline Club.
Not a bad way of controlling conflict coverage, is it?
James Lockhart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Is he with or just watching Julian?
- Blackwatch

It seems that the Sussex address specified in the bail conditions is indeed that of one of the Lockhart clan. Our Julian is accumulating some very strange defenders.

[David Guyatt]

Interesting indeed.

[Magda Hassan]

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Is Karl Rove Driving the Effort to Prosecute Julian Assange?


Fredrik Reinfeldt and George W. Bush
Former Bush White House strategist Karl Rove likely is playing a leading role in the effort to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a source with ties to the justice community tells Legal Schnauzer.

Assange was arrested last week in London for alleged sex crimes in Sweden. A lawyer for Assange said Monday that the arrest was a ruse designed to give the United States more time to build a case against Assange on other charges. The lawyer said a grand jury is being prepared in Washington, D.C., to look into WikiLeaks' activities. Meanwhile, Assange has a court date today in the UK, where he is expected to seek a release on bail.

That Assange's legal troubles would originate in Sweden probably is not a coincidence, our source says. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has been called "the Ronald Reagan of Europe," and he has a friendship with Rove that dates back at least 10 years, to the George W. Bush campaign for president in 2000. Reinfeldt reportedly asked Rove to help with his 2010 re-election in Sweden.

On the hot seat for his apparent role in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, Rove sought comfort in Sweden. "When [Rove] was in trouble and did not want to testify on the three times he was invited [by the U.S. Congress], he wound up in Sweden," our source says. "Further, it was [Reinfeldt] that first hired Karl when he got thrown out of the White House.

"Clearly, it appears that [Rove], who claims to be of Swedish descent, feels a kinship to Sweden . . . and he has taken advantage of it several times."

Why would Rove be interested in corralling Julian Assange? To help protect the Bush legacy, our source says. "The very guy who has released the documents that damage the Bushes the most is also the guy that the Bush's number one operative can control by being the Swedish prime minister's brain and intelligence and economic advisor."

Could Rove also be trying to protect himself? What if WikiLeaks has documents--or Rove thinks it could get documents--that prove "Turd Blossom's" role in criminal activity during the Bush years? What if someone with a conscience from the Bush administration--if such a person exists--provided WikiLeaks with documents that show Rove's role in political prosecutions, the unlawful firings of U.S. attorneys, and more? Could Rove be trying to save his own doughy butt?

Reporting from Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now!, lends support to our source's insights about Rove and Sweden. In a piece from December 2008, "Karl Rove in Sweden," Goodman wrote about the ties between "Bush's Brain" and Reinfeldt. This was just a few weeks after Barack Obama had won the presidential election in the United States:

Traditional Swedish politics also are in flux. Brian Palmer is an American, a former Harvard lecturer, who has immigrated to Sweden and become a Swedish citizen. Palmer has penned a biography of Sweden’s prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt. Palmer credits Reinfeldt, 43, with leading the shift away from the progressive social policies for which Sweden has become world-famous. He said Reinfeldt, in 1993, “wrote a book, ‘The Sleeping People,’ where he said that the welfare state should only prevent starvation, nothing beyond that. After being elected ... one of his first major visits abroad was to George Bush in the White House.”

Reinfeldt and his Moderate Party hired Karl Rove as a political consultant to help with the election coming in 2010. Palmer went on: “We have a real kind of silent war on the labor movement. We have a rather dramatic change in the tax system, abolishing the inheritance tax and most property taxes, cutbacks in social-welfare institutions.” This week, a new coalition of center-left political parties formed to challenge this rightward drift.

The U.S. electorate has thoroughly rebuked the Bush administration, handing Barack Obama and the Democrats a mandate for change on issues of war and health care, among others. One of the world’s leading laboratories for innovative social policies, Sweden is now wrestling with its own future. Those seeking change in the U.S. would be wise to watch Sweden, beyond Nobel week.

In December 2009, Goodman conducted an interview with Brian Palmer, Reinfeldt's biographer:

AMY GOODMAN: Brian Palmer, talk about the shift that’s going on in politics here—you’ve written a biography of the current prime minister—and how this fits in with the story we just talked about, the story of Alfred Nobel, both the Peace Prizes and his founding of, really, the weapons industry in this country.

BRIAN PALMER: One can begin by saying that the reasons for Sweden’s reputation as a progressive paradise, the strongest labor movement in the world with 87 percent of workers unionized, creating over many decades the strongest welfare state, the one that on the UN Human Poverty Index has the least poverty in the world. And then, what we’ve seen over the last twenty years, but particularly since the 2006 election, is a move away from all of that.

We have a prime minister who in the 1990s wrote a book, The Sleeping People, where he said that the welfare state should only prevent starvation, nothing beyond that, no other standard should be guaranteed. After being elected, Fredrik Reinfeldt, one of his first major visits abroad was to George Bush in the White House, this in spite of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, a visit that many people thought shouldn’t have happened, his coalition then getting—bringing over Karl Rove for advice and support—Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s electoral victories.

AMY GOODMAN: They brought Karl Rove here?

BRIAN PALMER: This past summer.

AMY GOODMAN: Because?

BRIAN PALMER: Because he can offer good advice on how to win the 2010 election. And—

AMY GOODMAN: Is this unusual for Karl Rove to do this kind of international consulting?

BRIAN PALMER: According to his website, it’s his only foreign consulting, for the Moderate Party of Sweden.

AMY GOODMAN: Wasn’t the current prime minister visiting Bush in the White House?

BRIAN PALMER: Yeah, and there was much—many people writing that this shouldn’t happen. He justified the visit, that he would persuade Bush to sign the Kyoto Accord, but people who were there say that he didn’t even really attempt that.
http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2010/...rt-to.html

[Peter Lemkin]

The whole "control of Wikileaks' saga just gets stranger and stranger. This from a comment on Aagirfan's blog:

Blackwatch left us this comment:The man that Assange may be staying with over Xmas - Vaughn Lockhart Smith - has quite an illustrious right-wing history (even more so than Jemima Goldsmith).
His family go back to Count James Lockhart, whose daughter Maria married John Smith of Ellingham Hall.
Ellingham is where Assange will be staying.
James was also in the Grenadier Guards.
His father and grandfather also have reputable military histories - as befits anybody entering Mi6. (see Lt.Col. Henry Lockhart Smith - in Landed Gentry)
Interesting to see Litvineko and Boris Berezovsky as past members of Vaughn's Frontline Club.
Not a bad way of controlling conflict coverage, is it?
James Lockhart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Is he with or just watching Julian?
- Blackwatch

It seems that the Sussex address specified in the bail conditions is indeed that of one of the Lockhart clan. Our Julian is accumulating some very strange defenders.

"Toto, I think we're not in Kansas any longer!" One wonders what's in the basement of his mansion?! Julian should be meeting some VERY 'interesting' dinner and party guests over the holidays......."could you speak a little louder into the mint/olive/clove in your drink, sir!" [they'll be wiring his bedroom now, if all the rooms aren't already - likely!] One can't blame hiim for his familiy. He did server in the military and has apparently funded some somewhat progressive films....we need a bit more on this man and his 'club'. I don't know if he is to be suspect or he, as well as Assange are being uused...but, agreed, very strange territory and a few steps up from Anna's student digs! [Eat your heart out Anna.....] More and more this is looking like a 'turning point' none could have predicted and out of the hands of even those who are trying to spin and control it. See here for an interesting perspective on this aspect. Mad Hatter's Tea Party might be apt to describe where we are, as a group.....

[Jan Klimkowski]

In addition to Vaughn Lockhart Smith's, ahem, intriguing ancestry, it should be noted that Jemima Khan also comes from an interesting genepool.

Jemima is, of course, the daughter of filthy rich rabid right-wing nutcase James Goldsmith, and the sister of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith.

Fwiw.

[Peter Lemkin]

In addition to Vaughn Lockhart Smith's, ahem, intriguing ancestry, it should be noted that Jemima Khan also comes from an interesting genepool.

Jemima is, of course, the daughter of filthy rich rabid right-wing nutcase James Goldsmith, and the sister of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith.

Fwiw.

Julian isn't 'hanging out' nor being 'mobbed' so much physicaly by the left, but by those connected to the right. In fairness, family members of right wingers are sometimes not - often quite the opposite; but this in now a confusing mess, and I fear will only get more tangled into a Gordian Knot!..... May truth an justice prevail, although I fear the opposite..... Anyone into Physics knows of 'entropy' and it seems entropy has entered the political realm.....a relentless and inevitable move from order to chaos and then furher chaos....ending in the total disorder of everyting. :damnmate:

[Peter Lemkin]

A sad day for the US if the Espionage Act is used against WikiLeaks

Resurrecting the 1917 law would be a mistake: it has a history of being used to suppress dissent

Stephen M Kohn
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 December 2010 17.08 GMT

Numerous US officials are calling for a resurrection of the US Espionage Act as a tool for prosecuting WikiLeaks. The dusting-off of the old law is all but certain. But the outcome of the constitutional dust-up that is sure to follow will result in triumph or tragedy for the US bill of rights.


In 1917, in the midst of a war hysteria, the United States passed the Espionage Act. The law has nothing to do with prosecuting spies. From its inception, it had everything to do with suppressing dissent. The Great War was unpopular with many Americans, very like today's engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Make no mistake about it. The Espionage Act targeted political dissidents. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee offered a simple defence of the law when it was introduced to Congress: "If we cannot reason with men to be loyal, it is high time we forced them to be loyal." Others, such as Congressman William Green of Iowa, were more blunt. His statement resembled modern calls supporting the execution of the suspected WikiLeaks "whistleblower" Bradley Manning: "For the extermination of these pernicious vermin no measures can be too severe." {Heil Green!}


The Espionage Act wreaked havoc on the American political left, destroying the young American Socialist party and one of its most progressive unions, the Industrial Workers of the World. Many others, including intellectuals, journalists, film producers and pacifist religious figures were also prosecuted. Prison terms were long, and some political prisoners died in federal jails. The abuses under the law were legendary, and mark a sad day in US history.


Why is the threat to prosecute WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act so potentially destructive? The law is not restricted to properly prohibiting the release of classified information. The law is not restricted to protecting legitimate government secrets. The law broadly prohibits any publication by anyone (newspapers included) of information related to national security, which may cause an "injury to the United States".


Who determines whether national security is actually at stake? Who determines what constitutes an "injury to the United States"? In 1917 the courts bent over backwards to permit the justice department to indict and prosecute thousands of dissidents. Loyalty to America meant nothing. The first amendment's protections for freedom of speech were mocked. Opposition to US war policies dictated who was jailed.


There are responsible mechanisms policing truly abusive leaks. The Espionage Act is not such a tool.


The attorney general should stop trying to resurrect the Espionage Act, and instead dust off his copy of the US constitution. If he has any question as to the meaning of the first amendment, he should read James Madison's 1789 speech, in which he introduced the bill of rights in the first Congress of the United States: "Freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable."

[Peter Lemkin]

WikiLeaks: Police to investigate Anonymous online attacks

Scotland Yard says it has been investigating alleged criminal offences by the group for several months

Josh Halliday
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 December 2010 18.47 GMT

MasterCard came under a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack last week. Photograph: Jonathan Bainbridge/Reuters

The Metropolitan police is to investigate recent online attacks on companies – including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal – that have cut ties with the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks.

Scotland Yard today said that for several months it has been examining a number of alleged criminal offences by Anonymous, the loose-knit group committed to bringing down sites perceived to be acting against WikiLeaks.

Downing Street was this week preparing to face a major attack on its sites from the group after Swedish prosecutors challenged the decision to grant bail to the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, over charges of alleged sex crimes in Sweden.

The Swedish prosecution office's website, aklagare.se, was attacked for 11 hours overnight on Tuesday after it maintained it would press for Assange to be extradited.

The so-called "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks, which bring down sites by overpowering them with repeated requests to load, are illegal in the UK.

The Met said today: "Earlier this year the Metropolitan police received a number of allegations of denial of service cyber attacks against several companies by a group calling themselves Anonymous. We are investigating these criminal allegations and our investigation is ongoing.

"The Metropolitan police service is monitoring the situation relating to recent and ongoing denial of service attacks, and will investigate where appropriate."

Anonymous leapt to the support of WikiLeaks after Amazon and other companies terminated business links with the site. The1,000-strong group of activists launched what they called Operation Payback, vowing to give perceived anti-WikiLeaks firms a "black eye".

Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and the company that hosted WikiLeaks were all brought offline after cutting ties with the whistleblowing website.

Although WikiLeaks has been careful not to support or admonish the cyber-war being waged on its behalf, Assange this week called for all supporters to defend WikiLeaks from "instruments of foreign policy", among which he specifically named the credit card companies.

At least three people, including two Dutch teenagers, have been arrested in the past week on suspicion of participating in the attacks. Most of those involved in the group are believed to be teenagers, based around the world including in the UK.

Experts estimate that about 90% of the group launch their attacks using an application called Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), downloads of which grew substantially last week. Although the group affects to have no hierarchy, operating in what it calls "organised chaos", documents have come to light that suggest a nucleus of decision-makers decides which sites to target.

An attack that exposed the email addresses and passwords of 1.3 million Gawker users has been linked to an Anonymous splinter group. The FBI is to investigate the incident.

• An earlier version of this article mistakenly identified EasyDNS as the hosting provider that cut ties with WikiLeaks. This should have referred to the hosting provider EveryDNS.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re continuing with John Pilger, the famed Australian filmmaker who has lived in Britain for decades. John, your film, The War You Don’t See, premiered last night on ITV in Britain and in theaters throughout Britain. The film features your interview with Julian Assange. This is an excerpt.

JOHN PILGER: In the information that you have revealed on WikiLeaks about these so-called endless wars, what has come out of them?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Looking at the enormous quantity and diversity of these military or intelligence apparatus insider documents, what I see is a vast, sprawling estate, what we would traditionally call the military-intelligence complex or military-industrial complex, and that this sprawling industrial estate is growing, becoming more and more secretive, becoming more and more uncontrolled. This is not a sophisticated conspiracy controlled at the top. This is a vast movement of self-interest by thousands and thousands of players, all working together and against each other.

AMY GOODMAN: That is an excerpt of the new film that premiered last night in Britain, The War You Don’t See. John Pilger, you know Julian Assange. Talk more about what he’s saying and about the media’s coverage of what WikiLeaks has done, from the release of the Iraq war logs to those in Afghanistan to now this largest trove of U.S. diplomatic cables ever released in history, John.

JOHN PILGER: Well, what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is doing is what journalists should have been doing. I mean, I think you mention the reaction to him. Some of the hostility, especially in the United States, from some of those very highly paid journalists at the top has been quite instructive, because I think that they are shamed by WikiLeaks. They are shamed by the founder of WikiLeaks, who is prepared to say that the public has a right to know the secrets of governments that impinge on our democratic rights. WikiLeaks is doing something very Jeffersonian. It was Jefferson who said that information is the currency of democracy. And here you have a lot of these famous journalists in America are rather looking down their noses, at best, and saying some quite defamatory things about Assange and WikiLeaks, when in fact they should have been exploiting their First Amendment privilege and letting people know just how government has lied to us, lied to us in the run-up to the Iraq war and lied to us in so many other circumstances. And I think that’s really been the value of all this. People have been given a glimpse of how big power operates. And they’re—it’s coming from a facilitator, it’s coming from these very brave whistleblowers. And in my film, Julian Assange goes out of his way to celebrate the people within the system who he describes as the equivalent of conscientious objectors during the First World War, these extraordinarily courageous people who were prepared to speak out against that slaughter. All the Bradley Mannings and others are absolutely heroic figures. There’s no question about that.

In my film, I also went to Washington, and I interviewed the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Bryan Whitman, the man who’s been in charge of media operations, as they call it, through a number of administrations. And I asked him to give a guarantee that Julian Assange would not be hunted down, as the media was describing it. And he said he wasn’t in a position to give that guarantee. So, I think we’re in a situation here, Amy, where people have to speak out. This is a very fundamental issue, and the people we need to speak out most of all are those with the privilege of the media, with the privilege of journalism, because this is about free information. This is about letting us know truths that we have to know about if we are to live in any form of democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: The nationwide warning that has gone out has been remarkable, John. Democracy Now! obtained the text of a memo that was sent to employees at USAID, thousands of employees, about reading the recently leaked WikiLeaks documents. The memo reads in part, quote, "Any classified information that may have been unlawfully disclosed and released on the Wikileaks web site was not 'declassified' by an appropriate authority and therefore requires continued classification and protection as such from government personnel... Accessing the Wikileaks web site from any computer may be viewed as a violation of the SF-312 agreement... Any discussions concerning the legitimacy of any documents or whether or not they are classified must be conducted within controlled access areas (overseas) or within restricted areas (USAID/Washington)... The documents should not be viewed, downloaded, or stored on your USAID unclassified network computer or home computer; they should not be printed or retransmitted in any fashion."

It’s gone out to agencies all over the government. State Department employees have been warned, again, not only on their computers where they’re blocked at work, but at home. People who have written cables are not allowed to put in their names to see if those cables come up. Graduate schools, like SIPA at Columbia University, an email was sent out from the administration saying the State Department had contacted them and that if they care about their futures in government, they should not post anything to Facebook or talk about these documents.

And then you have Allen West, one of the new Republican Congress members-elect, who called for targeted news outlets that publish the cables. In a radio interview, Congressmember West—well, Congressmember-elect West, called for censoring any news outlets that run stories based on the cables’ release. This is what he said.

ALLEN WEST: Here is an individual that is not an American citizen, first and foremost, for whatever reason, you know, gotten his hands on classified American material and has put it out there in the public domain. And I think that we also should be censoring the American news agencies which enabled him to be able to do this and then also supported him and applauded him for the efforts. So, that’s kind of aiding and abetting of a serious crime.

AMY GOODMAN: And speaking of crimes, another Congress member, longtime Congressmember Peter King from here in New York, has called for the classifying of WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization. I did my column this week talking about "'Assangination': From Character Assassination to the Real Thing" and the calls of Democratic consultants like Bob Beckel on Fox Business News for Julian Assange to be killed. He said he doesn’t agree with the death penalty, so he should be "illegally" killed, maybe taken out by U.S. special forces. John Pilger?

JOHN PILGER: Look, Amy, I thought you were reading out there several passages from 1984. I don’t think Orwell could have put it even better than that. Surely, we mustn’t think these things. I’m thinking it at the moment. So if I was over there, I must be guilty of something, and therefore I should be illegally taken out.

Look, there’s always been—as you know better than I, there’s always been a tension among the elites in the United States between those who pay some sort of homage, lip service, to all those Georgian gentleman who passed down those tablets of good intentions all that long time ago and a bunch of lunatics. But they’re powerful lunatics. They’re—perhaps "lunatics" is not quite right. They’re simply totalitarian people. And up they come in anything like this. I see—I read this morning that the U.S. Air Force has banned anybody connecting with it from reading The Guardian. So, everyone is banned from doing things and banned from thinking and so on.

They won’t get away with it. That’s the good news. They are hyperventilating, and they’re hysterical, and so be it, but they won’t get away with it. There are now two genuine powers in the world. We know about U.S. power. But that great sleeper, world public opinion, world decency, if you like, if I’m not being too romantic about it, is waking up. And the scenes outside the court yesterday went well beyond, I think, just the WikiLeaks issue. It is something else. WikiLeaks has triggered something. And I don’t think it will be the proverbial genie being stuffed back in the bottle, either. So, you know, world opinion is—when it stirs, when it moves, when it starts to come together collectively to do things that are important to us all, it’s a very formidable opponent to those totalitarian people who you’ve just quoted. So I’m rather more optimistic.

The immediate thing is to free Julian Assange. And I’m hoping that will happen tomorrow at the High Court. I should just add, you know, Mark Stephens was very eloquently describing the case. But, you know, the absurdity of this case is that a senior prosecutor in Sweden threw this thing out. And I’ve seen her papers. And she was left—she leaves us in no doubt there was absolutely no evidence to support any of these misdemeanors or crimes, or whatever they’re meant to be, at all. It was only the intervention of this right-wing politician in Sweden that reactivated this whole charade. So, in a way, it is perhaps symbolic of the kind of charades, rather lethal charades, that we’ve seen on a much wider scale in relation to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and other issues that have involved the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world. So, what we’re seeing is a rebellion. Where it will go, I’m not quite sure. But it’s certainly started, I can tell you.

AMY GOODMAN: John Pilger, I’d like to ask you to stay with us as we talk about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we talk about the power of the U.S. government. This week we reported on the sudden death of Richard Holbrooke, who has played such a key role through four Democratic administrations, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, from Timor to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. And we’d like to talk about his legacy and about U.S. foreign policy. You have done a number of documentaries related to the areas where he worked, and we’re also going to be joined by Jeremy Scahill.

I also want to say, when you talk about a wave of reaction against what has happened to Julian Assange, I mentioned Columbia’s graduate school called SIPA that warned students not to post things to Facebook or deal with these issues raised by WikiLeaks, but there has been a reversal. Clearly, the administration at Columbia has been seriously embarrassed, and the dean there has now issued a new statement saying that he encourages the discussion of issues, wherever those issues may take one. John Pilger, stay with us.