The British magistrate court has decided to surrender Julian Assange to the Nordic Amazons who were hunting for his head pending appeal. Thus the long Saga of the Broken Condom, or whatever name by which it will become known to posterity, took a definite turn for the worse. The judge decided to honor the European Arrest Warrant issued by man-eating Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Julian has appealed to the High Court, ensuring that the saga will go on as a side divertissement to the main story, Cablegate.
We shall not delve again into what happened between Julian and the two women; this has already been covered in previous installments. Today we turn to the dramatic events that occurred immediately afterwards. We live in an age of leaks, and this story is no exception. The Swedish police papers pertaining to Assange case have surfaced on the web and there are some shocking revelations. One revelation concerns the investigative editor of The Guardian, David Leigh and his accomplice Nick Davies. They were given the leaked police papers well before they were made public, and Davies constructed a story that revealed his special "unauthorised access". Now the original documents (in Swedish) have been published on the site flashback.org, and the English version is now available on Rixstep.com with this touching foreword from the translator:
"The truth will out, the truth wins out. Let no journalist ever again speculate into what the protocols say. Six months of digging and the people at Flashback have the actual documents. The sleaze printed by rags such as the Daily Mail, Sweden's Aftonbladet and Expressen, and perhaps above all the toxic Nick Davies of The Guardian, can stand no more. Yet more: these documents are an indictment of the news organisations' who've printed deliberate inaccuracies all along or even worse: refused to print anything at all. Nick Davies' account of the protocols was maliciously skewed; both Aftonbladet and Expressen had copies early on and printed nothing. Bloggers had copies but arrogantly kept the information to their Smeagol selves."
Once again we can compare the raw data with the official story, and once again we can confirm that Leigh and his partners are brazen, busy little cooks. They cooked the Embassy Cables, as we reported in Counterpunch, and now we can see exactly how they cooked the Assange police papers too. Leigh and his supporters have loudly proclaimed that his deletions and redactions were due to British libel laws. In this story, he proves how empty was his rhetoric. Every damaging accusation against Assange was given a place of prominence; the true and disturbing picture has remained buried until now.
Our story begins on Friday, August 20, 2010, when the two women of our story, Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen met in Stockholm, compared their experiences and discussed how to commemorate their weekend with Julian. Manipulative and ambitious, Anna Ardin had decided to get some sweet revenge on our breezy, festive Julian, who had drifted like a butterfly away from her bed and over to the bed of the younger Sofia. Anna's plan was to stay out of the limelight she convinced Sofia to make out the complaint. But she did arrange for it: Anna took Sofia to see the police.
But Anna did not take Sofia directly to the nearest police station. No, Anna had already arranged an appointment with her good friend, policewoman Irmeli Krans. Anna Ardin and Irmeli Krans were once political running mates for a city hall election Irmeli came in at 38th place and Anna won 12th. Irmeli is a well-known gender activist, a member of the LGBT movement and the Gay Police Union. Krans's blog is full of pictures taken at gay parades from Riga, Tallinn, and Stockholm. It might appear as if this stern criminal investigator treats her police work as a hobby while her real work is attending gay parades all over Europe, but she dropped everything for the Assange case.
Anna delivered Sofia to the police station only after the main force had gone home at 4 pm, leaving Anna's friend Irmeli to handle the distraught Sofia. At 4:21pm, Irmeli began writing what would later be described as "the interrogation of Sofia Wilen". Anna Ardin was always present in the room: she brought Sofia in and introduced her to the policewoman, but her presence was never mentioned in the protocols. This is a gross violation of law: fellow witnesses are never present during police questioning! Furthermore, every person present at the inquiry must be listed, yet Anna unaccountably remains invisible. She gave no evidence at all.
In the end, all this careful police-room theatre was spoiled with a too-hasty denouement. The interrogation was not even over before a different policewoman, as if on cue, called the prosecutor and obtained an order to arrest Julian in absentia. It almost seems as if a thoughtful hand had prearranged it all. The prosecutor issued the arrest warrant without having read the complaint and before Anna had made a statement or even a complaint. The climax of our drama took place at 6 pm on Friday, and yet the very next morning (Saturday, August 21st), the sleazy right-wing tabloid Expressen, a Swedish clone of theNew York Post, had already published all of the police allegations, featuring a photo of Assange on the front page and the headline DOUBLE RAPIST'.
That was a Pentagon threat coming true. The US military demanded from Assange to destroy all the files, or else. "If doing the right thing is not good enough for them (WikiLeaks), then we will figure out what other alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing," the Pentagon spokesman said. The sex case was a device to compel Julian, and Sofia's feelings were of no importance.
The leaked police papers reveal that Sofia was heart-broken when she learned of the charges; she never expected Assange to be charged with rape. As we learn in testimony from her American boyfriend, Sofia was raised to have a hysterical fear of unprotected sex. After a lifetime of horror stories, she feared the fatal consequences of unprotected sex; she was terrified at the thought of viruses crawling over her body, and the only thing she wanted from the police was to force Julian to take an STD test immediately. Julian was willing but the labs were closed for weekend.
Even Irmeli Krans, our man-hating interrogator, could not help but think there was no crime committed. Apparently Irmeli had made plans to comfort Sofia, and voiced her intentions to her superiors; she was promptly taken off the case and her boss Mats Gehlin took over. The first thing he did was order her to fix the record of the Sofia interview. Irmeli knew this was wrong, and she wrote him a message saying "With the risk of appearing difficult I do not want to have an unsigned document with my name circulating in DurTvå-space. Particularly not now when the case has developed as it has." But he kept pushing her, and eventually she submitted to his authority. The computer system (DurTvå) however, would not allow her to falsify the records instead, the system re-dated the protocols to August 26, a sure sign of tampering. So now the original protocol does not even exist. Yet even after doctoring the records, the interrogation of Sofia Wilen is a most peculiar one: she did not sign it and there is no voice recording, so we can only guess what went on in there. Discrepancies in Swedish police records might not be news, but that night of August 20th the night the prosecutor authorized Julian's arrest was a very busy night for a pandering political party and its pet journalists.
That evening there had been a lavish crayfish party at Harpsund Slott, the Prime Minister's summer residence, a Swedish Chequers. Harpsund is a fabulous place, and every important guest of the Swedish government has visited it: from Nikita Khrushchev to Angela Merkel. Besides the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, there were present several politicians and political journalists, among them Niklas Svensson, a political journalist for Expressen. Svensson was fired from Expressen in 2006 for hacking into an opposition party computer and stealing an important document, the party strategic paper for elections. Later he was reinstalled and rewarded for his strong political sympathies for the ruling right-wing (and very pro-American) coalition.
That night Svensson received a message on his cell phone describing the double complaint against Julian, although we know that at the time there was still only one reluctant statement. We don't know whether or not he shared the good news with the ministers and Ambassadors at the party, but I don't see how he could have contained himself. The elections were scheduled in thee weeks' time, and the government was eager to placate the Americans, upset at Julian's new Swedish base of operations. Svensson called the police and the prosecutor, and they confirmed the news as an official press release from the police department.
The next morning, policewoman Sara Wennerblom telephoned Anna Ardin and told her that she would have to give evidence. They did the interview by telephone that same day. In this phone interview Anna said that she freely consented to have sex with Assange, but that she wouldn't have let it happen if she'd known he didn't have a condom. So much for the rape charge! A few hours later, the warrant was voided when another prosecutor, Eva Finne, looked at the reports and concluded that no crime was committed. Case closed.
But the closed case was soon to be reopened. Pro-American right-wing forces in Sweden wanted to do as much damage to Julian as possible. They were worried that Sweden might become Wikileaks headquarters, and they knew that allegations of sexual misconduct would (and did) prevent Julian from obtaining permanent residency. The right-wing Swedes were supported and guided by Karl Rove, the American political adviser and longtime Bush supporter who has been advising Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for the past two years. Reinfeldt would like to be considered "the Ronald Reagan of Sweden"; he has tried for years to dismantle Swedish socialism and bring them into NATO. The American lawyer Roger Shuler has argued convincingly that Rove's fingerprints are all over the Assange case.
In order to reopen the case, a law firm run by two political heavyweights was brought in, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, sorry, Bodstrom and Borgstrom. Tweedledum Thomas Bodstrom was once a Justice minister whose claim to fame is that he delivered two hapless Swedish-resident Arabs to a CIA rendition plane so that they could be tortured in one of Mubarak's jails. Tweedledee Claes Borgstrom was once a minister for equality, no, not social equality, God forbid, but "gender equality". Feminism is always a good career move for a Swedish man, at the very least as a way to atone for his offensive gender. Borgstrom is a super-feminist, forever calling for a more expansive definition of rape. He famously stated that no woman could know for sure whether or not she was raped; only the lawyers can tell for sure. Swedish bloggers noticed that he "defended the European Data Retention Directive on the grounds that it helps catch more rapists'."
Borgstrom spoke to his old comrade Marianne Ny, and together they prepared new laws that stretched the definition of rape so far that "if a woman doesn't have multiple orgasms during hetero sex, the man can be charged with rape", in the witty words of a sister feminist. Ny is heading a "development center" specializing in sexual offences, and is attempting to take feminism to the next level (a la Valerie Solanas). Retired judge Brita Sundberg-Wietman writes this about Marianne Ny: She is known to have said that when a woman alleges she has been a victim of assault by a man, it is a good idea to have the man detained, because it is not until he is arrested that the woman has time to think of her life in peace and realize how she has been treated. According to Ny the detention has a good effect as protection for the woman "even in cases where the perpetrator is prosecuted but not found guilty".
Marianne Ny is a prosecutor in far-away Gothenburg, but Swedish laws allow her to take on any case as long as there is some new development. And lo and behold, under Borgstrom's guidance new evidence suddenly appeared: ten days after Julian's arrest and release, Anna Ardin carried a soiled condom into a police station. The condom was checked, and the examination came up blank: the condom showed no sign of being used at all. But Marianne Ny did not need a positive result, all she needed was a "new development"; and so she re-opened the case.
Afterwards, she did nothing. From time to time she called a witness to be interrogated, but Julian was not called up again. It was only much later, when he was in the UK, that Marianne Ny decided to demand his extradition. This was a smart move. If she had called him in for questioning while he was in Sweden, the case would have immediately collapsed. Since he will now be brought into Sweden against his will, Ny and Borgstrom will be able to lock Assange up for months until the trial, as Swedish law does not permit bail. Once in custody, Julian can be shipped to the US, or directly to Guantanamo without even returning to Sweden; as a detained foreigner he can be deported at the pleasure of the Swedish government.
Our hero has found himself in quite a mess. And meanwhile, in order to create more confusion and undermine Julian's unflagging popularity, the Guardian team has cooked up a new charge: this time it isanti-Semitism. It is much easier to shout "Anti-Semite!" than to defend The Guardian against these very real accusations: falsification of cables, plagiarism, manipulation, deliberate smearing of Julian Assange… The best answer to their newest baseless accusation is given in this fabulous Julian Assange kicks little kittens video.
Anna Ardin: Follow Up
If Anna Ardin hoped to enjoy her revenge, it misfired badly. She ran in the local elections just after the story broke; she received 6 (six) votes altogether, while the next lowest contender pulled 1500 votes. In a classic case of cooking your own goose, Anna Ardin became the biggest turn-away name in the country. Her only chance at rehabilitation lies in the fact that she may be sought out by Black PR agencies for her negative public relations capabilities.
We wrote in Counterpunch that the young lady had some CIA connections, and that she was deported from Cuba for that very reason. Some feminists pointed out that a lady should not be called names after suffering at the hands of the brute Assange. However, we have now a confirmation from a sterling source: the BBC.
Their man in Cuba, Fernando Ravsberg reported: "Anna Ardin, the Swede who is accusing Julian Assange of rape, appears to have worked for some Cuban dissident faction. Dissident sources confirmed that Ardin supported the opposition in Cuba for years. "
"Manuel Cuesta, a leader of the Arco Progresista admitted that this political connection lasted from 2004 to 2006. The activities of the Swede in Cuba had little to do with those of a normal tourist. The opposition leader assured that she "advised us on how to form a political party, we exchanged bibliographies and her group gave us a minimal amount of economic assistance."
"It seems everything was running along fine until she tried to "make us pay the cost" for her services. According to the opponent, "she tried to influence us too forcefully on how we should lead Arco Progresista. Our reluctance generated certain uneasiness on her part."
Manuel Cuesta described her as a very beautiful woman, "Self-centered, having a strong personality, committed, intelligent and very Eurocentric. Her principal virtue is her determination and her worst defect is her Eurocentric arrogance."
Cuesta told Ravsberg that in 2006 Anna established some tie with Carlos Alberto Montaner, who is seen by some as a CIA contact. Montaner vigorously denied knowing Anna.
Ravsberg concluded: "Arco Progresista has few certainties but many suspicions. Manuel told us that all of this "enters into an intriguing realm of political jockeying, and it amazes me a little. We're thinking back so we can piece things together, because it's evident that there's something strange in all this." http://novakeo.com/?p=10100
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Why did Julian Assange receive an Interpol Red Notice, but Gaddafi only an Orange? Tess Lawrence investigates the murky world of Interpol exclusively for Independent Australia asking some troubling questions and uncovering some startling facts.
Why was Julian Assange who has not yet been charged given the most severe Red Notice by Interpol, when brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi only received an Orange Notice?
Do senior Interpol officials have a vendetta against Wikileaks and Julian Assange?
Is the organisation and its Notice System fatally compromised?
What's with the Interpol Colour Chart for the world's most wanted?
Recidivist mass murderer Muammar Gaddafi he of the all-girl vestal virgin Clit Squad cops a mere clockwork Orange Notice whilst our Julian Assange of WikiLeaks exposer of state-sanctioned killers and war crimes and who is fighting extradition to Sweden for uncharged sexual allegations is king hit with the big ticket Red Notice. Go figure.
There's something shonky going on in the shady world of Interpolitics. Let's move in for a closer shufti.
Have you checked out the profiles of alleged crims who normally make the Red Notice billboard? We're talking big-time kahuna felons here. Terrorists, mass murderers, people traffickers, drug barons and their ilk. Got the picture?
Try as I did, I just couldn't find anyone else in the entire of Red Notice history as far down the criminal dude chain as our Julian. And, apparently, never before has Sweden requested a Red Notice based on similar circumstances and allegations.
What's more, Interpol sources say that the Red Notice posting of Julian Assange is the first and only case of its kind. Is that true Interpol?
Interpol is such a funny little secretive and paradoxical clubbette always going on about how worthy and important it is to data sharing, preserving international security, the ongoing tumultuous fight against terrorism and corruption and the eradication of international crime by enabling all of their 188 members with the power to fight organised crimeincluding that well known bastion of human rights, justice and democratic egalitarianism, Libya.
Ipso facto Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the Philippines, Morocco, Sudan, Australia, Britain, the United States, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan and all of the rest of us who are guilty of hypocrisy and political expediency and who wallpaper our economies with banknotes sullied with the sweat and blood of the disenfranchised, the bullied, the defeated and the enslaved.
We dance naked before our fully clothed despotic masters and do their bidding on the pretext they do ours. Ahhh… political fellatio a higher art form when conducted between consenting countries rather than desperate homo sapiens.
Only a matter of weeks ago, the West and its subordinates were extolling the virtues of the important geopolitical positions and posturings of the likes of dictatorial psychopaths Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gadaffi Libya's self-proclaimed "King of Africa".
The facts that these two share the same incompetent hair colourist as Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and appear to have been dipped in formaldehyde should have given us a few clues.
They've had so much cosmetic surgery they probably haven't any tear ducts left. That's why they can't cry, for pity's sake, and why they didn't need all those tear gas canisters we authorised and branded with our logo.
What do we care about their peoples; our brothers and sisters; our kith and kin? Other tribes they may be but of our own species? Well, sort of. Just. But hey, they were really losers weren't they? Big time. They deserved the governments they didn't vote for. Like us. Former Interpol President Jackie Selebi Convicted of Corruption
Just like Interpol deserved its former President … who was done for corruption, fraud and racketeering and such things. True dinks, I kid you not. Yes, the President of Interpol!
While we're at it, I'm puzzled as to how an international agency such as Interpol could be so incompetent that it couldn't even find a photo of Julian Assange to go with his Red Notice posting (see above). C'mon, fair suck of the fellatio sav, haven't they heard of Google or in-your-Facebook?
Interpol remains publicly contemptuous of and unaccountable to the world it purports to serve.
For a start, they're supposed to be the top guns, the crème de la crème, of information gathering sleuths, data merging, analyses and people tracking. Well, I'd like to see a group like Transparency International investigate Interpol. You know that Interpol is not supposed to do any political favours?
But I'm not convinced. Call me churlish…perhaps I've been inhaling too much tear gas. Or not enough!
Take the way Interpol crisis managed their corrupt President, Jackie Selebi.
In 2002, the then National Commissioner of the South African Police Service, was elected as Interpol's Vice President and a couple of years later, in 2004 he was voted President.
I'm assuming that Interpol would practice normal HR due diligence and conduct background checks not only on its thousands of employees worldwide but also on its elected officers.
After all, doing these checks is their forte. Surely no one would be exempt from these basic policing protocols and security checks?
Of course, on the surface of it, Mr Selebi's credentials were impeccable, no question. As were his connections … well, most of them.
After all, he was a former head of the ANC Youth League, an MP, South Africa's representative to the United Nations and Chair of an Anti-Landmine Conference, Chair of Justice, Crime Prevention and Security and all of that. Goodness, the man even won a Human Rights Award! (What a co-incidence, Julian Assange has won several of those too…)
On September 10, 2007, South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority issued a warrant for Selebi's arrest. Did Interpol post a Red Notice on their President? Course not.
How come he didn't resign as President of Interpol until months later, on January 13, 2008?
And why is my feverish mind and feint heart suddenly darting over the Kenyan border and thinking of the tragic murders of human rights activists lawyer Oscar Kamau Kingara and his assistant John Paul Oulu?
Both men were gunned down in their car whilst stuck in a traffic jam near the University of Nairobi on their way to a human rights meeting.
These courageous whistleblowers had refused to cower before corrupt police and political thugs and the report they helped produce in 2008 was to result in that courage being met with even greater cowardice by their killers on March 5, 2009 and indifference by the rest of the world.
Like their brutal executions, the report The Cry of Blood Report on Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances and there were thousands of killings attributed to the Kenyan police was largely ignored by Western and mainstream media. Still is.
But Julian Assange and WikiLeaks grasped the significance of the Report and published it and were damned, earning Amnesty International's New Media Award for 2009.
So, a kangaroo hop and a carjacking skip from Kenya back to South Africa. Both Interpol members. We shan't bother joining any dots.
On July 2, 2010, after being subjected to a scathing dressing down by the Judge in South Africa's High Court, Selebi was found guilty of corruption.
He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and has since been given leave to appeal.
From the evidence submitted to the Court, it was obvious that Selebi abused his privileged position like alerting people that they were under police surveillance not a good look for a President of Interpol and made preposterous assertions that he was unaware of the criminal activities of his longstanding decidedly criminal civilian associates.
This from a man who was his country's Police Commissioner and the head of Interpol. Our Interpol. The World's Interpol.
And let us not forget that while holding dual office, Selebi was the dude who first suggested legalising prostitution but only for the duration of the 2010 World Soccer Cup, mind you.
Nice one Jackie. Your heart was in the right place right behind your trouser zip. You can see why he was elected head of Interpol.
Now let's be fair about this. Just because a President of Interpol turns out to be corrupt does not mean we should condemn the whole organisation. After all, excreta (it's the lapsed Catholic in me) happens, to misquote Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47037
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
All of who care for freedom of information, speech and expression should be thankful for the recent ruling in my Twitter case. Thankful because it exposes the reality in which we live. The judge's ruling exposed the blatant truth: that users of the Internet and social media sites hosted in the USA do NOT have any rights as individuals to defend themselves against the tyranny of authorities wanting to use the information we share and often consider private. Emails, conversations, messaging and social networking are now fair game for the "thought police." It is good that we know that this is how the court system in the land of the free views our rights, because now we can do something about regaining those rights!
We are at critical point when it comes to freedom of information and speech. If we don't act now it might be too late in a years' time. Everything happens so fast in the realm of the Internet -- our rights are eroding every day at an alarming speed. I urgently suggest and call upon everyone who cares for their rights to their content online to join me in fighting for these rights.
I am calling for a joint action to demand that all social media sites that host our information in the USA will notify all of their users that they don't have any rights to defend themselves except through these sites but not as individuals. I want to know if Facebook, Google and Twitter are willing battle for every one of us against unwarranted and sometimes secret demands to our information from the U.S. government. If they can't make that pledge we will either leave them or ask them to change users' terms or demand that authorities recognize our rights to defend ourselves.
Here are a few examples that I find unsettling:
Google hosts our entire history of searching and they create a profile of every one of us as consumers so that they can make us targeted costumers for individually directed ads. This is why Google can maintain their services for free.
If authorities get access to this profiling do you feel comfortable that they do? Consider this scenario: You are doing research on terrorists or the drug culture for an article or essay all of your searching is now part of your profile. It is easy to build a very damning and erroneous profile of you simply based on your innocent research.
Many users do not understand that they are giving away all control of their web usage statistics. Personal data can be used against you in secret! This is very dangerous to those, like me, who are activists, journalists and researchers. It equally endangers the merely curious.
All our emails can be exposed and handed over. Every email you write is an open postcard for authorities to read whenever they choose.Every move you make on Facebook can be used against you and as my case proved we now know we have no right whatsoever to stop it even if we were to stop using these sites today. All our information is already stored there.
In George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a "thoughtcrime" was an illegal type of thought.Have we finally reached the sad state of affairs where our written communication, indeed our very thoughts are seen by an increasingly surveillance-obsessed totalitarian state as "thoughtcrimes"? Is this the kind of world we would wish for our children?
In the next few days I will work to gather as many as supporters as possible to be part of this joint action for our rights as users of social media. It will be an effort to our privacy rights and the right to defend our personal content online. Drop me an email if you have ideas on how to take this further so we may make a shockwave of change.
Together we can stop this unjust development.
Birgitta Jonsdottir
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Is it just me, or do only the first few pages show...the rest seem blank....
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
US President Barack Obama, currently on a trip through Latin America, visited Chile yesterday to further expand trade relations and military and security cooperation between the two countries. He did not intend for his visit to be about the US' history of interfering in Chile's domestic affairs or, for that matter, human rights. But, the first question President Obama was asked was the following: Is the United States "willing to ask for forgiveness for what it did in those very difficult years in the 70s in Chile?"
President Obama answered, "I think it's very important for all of us to know our history. And obviously the history of relations between the United States and Latin America have at times been extremely rocky and have at times been difficult." But, "I think it's important, though, for us, even as we understand our history and gain clarity about our history, that we're not trapped by our history."
Furthermore, President Obama said he could not "speak to all of the policies of the past" but could "speak certainly to the policies of the present and the future." As he noted that the US has supported democratic reform in Chile for two decades, President Obama refused to acknowledge the true history of US relations with Chile, a history that involved supporting Gen. Augusto Pinochet in a CIA-backed coup in 1973.
President Obama may not want to get "trapped" in a discussion that leads him to have to take responsibility for the country, which he currently presides over, but files released between 1998 and 2003 show, according to investigative reporter Peter Kornbluh, "The US created a climate of a coup in Chile, a situation of chaos and agitation."
Worried the Chilean military was not ready for a coup, the CIA mounted a policy that would eventually lead to a coup that would topple Latin America's first democratically-elected Marxist president President Salvador Allende. The CIA clandestinely armed forces with tear gas canisters, gas masks, and arms to ensure the success of a coup. Some members of the CIA even went so far as to propose a "terror campaign to stun the Chilean people into accepting a military regime." Dropping bombs and using low-level fly overs of airplanes to psychologically influence the Chilean people was considered.
The US bribed and massively funded non-left wing political leaders in an effort to de-stabilize the country. Declassified documents prove all of this, yet, as evidenced by President Obama's answer, it is not possible for America to acknowledge historical reality.
Many of the documents, however, were redacted so that people would remain unidentified. And, many more documents on Pinochet and Chile remain classified. That's why Obama was also asked if he would release more documents to help those who had been victim of human rights abuses committed by Pinochet's military regime.
As Greg Grandin of The Nation writes, "Last month, in anticipation of Obama's trip to Chile, Carmen Frei, the daughter of Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chile's president prior to Salvador Allende and believed poisoned by Pinochet in 1982, said that precisely because there has been such a radical change in the politics of the United States that we believe in the human rights [policies] of President Obama, this is the momentif he's coming to Chile he can receive the official requests and petitions.' And just before his arrival, Chile's entire center-left congressional cohort signed an open letter urging the US president to declassify the documents."
Sen. Isabel Allende, said of the coup prior to President Obama's visit that the coup "represents an unpaid debt for the justice system, to acknowledge the numerous crimes committed that day, identify those who participated, establishing their criminal responsibilities and knowing the entire truth of that day." She, along with others, prepared themselves to push President Obama to not only declassify documents but push the Chilean government to "deal more forcefully with the darkest period in Chile's political history."
President Obama, however, chose the path of least resistance. He opted to not take the moment to boldly stand up for accountability, human rights and justice and he would only be able to commit to "reviewing" a request for declassification of information. He said Washington would cooperate "in principle," but that was as far as he was willing to go. And, he chose to ignore the fact that "Chile's Supreme Court recently ordered investigative judge Mario Carroza to probe Allende's death along with 725 others whose cases were never prosecuted," and "another judge, Alejandro Madrid began probing Frei Montalva's death in 2002, and has charged six people, including doctors and former Pinochet spies, with poisoning him and covering up his death by removing his bodily fluids and organs."
The response is not all that surprising when one looks at how US diplomat Paul E. Simons framed news that a judge had decided Eduardo Frei Montalva was killed by figures linked to Pinochet.
A cable released by WikiLeaks from December 2009 begins with this summary, "On December 7, Judge Alejandro Madrid charged six individuals with assassinating former President Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1982. Frei, who is the father of the current presidential candidate Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, died ostensibly of a bacterial infection after undergoing routine surgery. USG laboratory tests conducted to date have found no evidence of the poisoning that Judge Madrid alleges, though some of the substances alleged to have been used cannot be detected via laboratory tests."
On an autopsy performed on Frei's body without the consent of Frei's family less than one hour after his death, Simons adds, "The highly unusual autopsy was allegedly performed in the hospital room where Frei died, using a ladder to hang the body upside down in order to drain bodily fluids into the bathtub. Some organs, and in particular those whose chemical compositions might indicate poisoning, were removed and destroyed, and the body was embalmed."
But, Simons ultimately concludes, "Even when a judicial decision is eventually reached in the case, Frei's death--like many other events surrounding the Allende and Pinochet governments--is likely to remain controversial, with Chilean opinions about the matter based more on ideology than fact."
Simons comments:
…It is easy to see why his family and supporters suspect that he was murdered. And Judge Madrid may have additional evidence which post is not aware of to support this conclusion.
On the other hand, at present the Embassy is not aware of any direct evidence indicating foul play. Official tests conducted by AFIP and unofficial tests by Dr. Centeno have not shown toxic levels for any of the elements tested. Given the extremely long time since Frei's death and the destruction of some key organs, forensic science may not be able to provide definitive evidence whether Frei was murdered. Chile's tragic recent history continues to divide its people, and the death of this emblematic president seems destined to be yet one more area in which the full truth may never be known.
The "direct evidence" could be in the classified documents that have not been released. But, Chileans may never get to see the entirety of what happened from 1970-1990 and how involved the US was in backing and steering the Pinochet military regime. They may never get to see because free trade agreements and security cooperation deals appear to be more important than truth and justice for the Chilean people. And, if information on US involvement was revealed, it could significantly complicate relations with Chile that are especially important to the US.
Unfortunately, it is not all that surprising that President Obama would promote this idea about not getting trapped by history. This meme is essentially a remix of a regular assertion he has madethat "America needs to move forward, not look back." In the US, Obama has refused to push the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute former Bush Administration officials for torture. The Obama Administration has opted to not have any kind of a commission to review how the Bush Administration lied and manipulated the country into supporting a war in Iraq. The Administration has chosen to not look into the use of illegal wiretapping by the NSA and, instead, has chosen to prosecute an NSA whistleblower for providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in email messages from 2006 and 2007.
It should be said, then, WikiLeaks, through its release of cables, war logs, a US military video of a helicopter attack, and other documents, has forced the US to look back as it tries to move forward. That may be one of the chief reasons why it is regarded as such a potent enemy.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The NDTV Assange interview of 22 March 2011
Linked to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Prannoy Roi
New Delhi: In an exclusive interview to NDTV's Prannoy Roy, Julian Assange talks about the WikiLeaks storm that has erupted in India. This is the transcript of the interview.
NDTV: You are under global attack...your home country Australia accuses you of treason...America wants to arrest you...in Sweden, you have been accused of rape. The West prides itself on the rule of law and its institutions of justice. Are you shocked by the ferocity and illegalities of the attacks on you?
Assange: I am disappointed that the US Administration has decided to betray the traditions of the founding fathers and those great traditions of Franklin and Madison. Now the codified Bill of Rights within important protection for freedom is in the first amendment......... so that is disappointing. I would like to say that it is not shocking. We have been following the US military for 4-5 years now in this process of WikiLeaks and in other countries... but we can see that there is a burgeoning security state that has spread out not just for Washington because the centre of gravity is around there, but goes into all Western countries. And there is a Western alliance that responds very aggressively. And previous publications have received some of that response but it is really the size and the scale of the publication which has received and been stimulating such an aggressive attack.
NDTV: With this kind of a relentless attack.. where can you live safely? Is there any country that is safe for you?
Assange: The question about the countries is interesting. In December last year, the Australian government - my home government - stated that it had started a whole lot of investigation into us on behalf of the US government including (its) domestic intelligence agency and foreign intelligence agency, department of defence, the state federal police including the FBI.. and the CBI in the case of India. So that country does not seem to be a safe home for me and...similarly in one way, Sweden having a reputation built up in 1970s for neutrality will be a safe country. But it is not true because of its proximity to Russia, and closer partnership with NATO...it is no longer possible. So there are perhaps other countries, perhaps Brazil or maybe even India, big enough countries to be able to stand up to the sort of the US interference, if they chose to do so. But right now it is not clear if there is any country that is safe for our publication. But we do have the will of the majority of people. My friends in Egypt and Tunisia say that these two countries perhaps would be the safest for us now because of the revolution of the governments that is bringing up...
Here the Indian news report on the Assange NDTV interview
NDTV: Many of us feel that you are a true new-world journalist, I mean you are fighting for freedom of information... but then you have got the US Vice President Joe Biden calling you a high-tech terrorist, the former Speaker saying you should be treated as an enemy combatant. Now enemies in America, they are normally killed, that is their public statements. I just wonder what they say to you privately. Have you been threatened privately?
Assange: We do receive threats from time to time , there are many of them. But we do not take those threats too seriously... it is the people who are not making the threats and are concerned for us that are important. There is a bill going through the US Senate to clear us a transnational threat and therefore treat us in a legal sense the same way as Al-Qaida...hopefully we will work it through. The feeling in the United States is getting better...there are a number of academics and journalists in US that have come forward to announce those sort of moves. We just saw the State Department spokesperson Crowley resign over the treatment of Bradley Manning, one of our alleged sources. So it is not correct to say that US is of one voice to destroy us. There are still good people in US, still good people within the US administration, within the intelligence agencies, even in the Pentagon. And it is now bit of a fight between them to see that which way the US going to go.. is it going to be completely taken over by its security sector and throw all its good traditions out the window? Or are those reformists or we can even say the conservative forces that will want to conserve some of the good values of the United States, are they going to win? And that is why this is such an interesting period for us, and of course for everyone else, because after all the US is everyone's superpower. And the US President is our President, my President and he is also India's President in the sense that the US is able to dispense its powers into many other countries. So which way it goes, that is very important. So it is quite an interesting time. It is possible that after the end of this process, we will actually see something better than what we had in the beginning. Yes, at the moment there is incredible overreach of power by the US administration. On the other hand, it is drawing a lot of attention to that power and abuse by the burgeoning security state in the US. And it may have struck too hard and as a result people will strike back...
NDTV: You mentioned that the US president is like the Super-President of us all. In the recent leaks about India, the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, the overriding feature is the extent of America's efforts in influencing policies in India, so are you surprised at that or was it expected?
Assange: Looking at what the US has done with other countries, which we have revealed through these cables, it's not at all a surprise, it is their modus operandi. When I first started reading this material I thought my God everything those South American Marxists in the 1960s were complaining about in relation with the state department, it is actually true. it is not just that they are making a political rhetoric, actually it does appear that state department is actually an instrument of US industry of all particular types and it goes around the world clicking political intelligence, interfering in unions and all. We even saw this in Australia where the Australian Cabinet Minister from the Labour government was a confidential source for US Embassy, going there frequently.
NDTV: There is of course an alternate point of view that what you revealed in these cables is a set of opinions and assessments made by some American diplomats in the US embassy. And you were just saying that 'my task ends there in revealing these secret cables' but there are other points of view that says that it leaves a lot of collateral damage where opinions and assessments by these officials are taken as facts to embarrass and weaken their states. And people ask you is that a fair thing to do, just leave this out and wash your hands off it?
Assange: Absolutely not....it is not correct to say that all these cables are mere opinions by US diplomats...that is not true. These are official correspondence sent by Ambassadors, sent in their official capacity back to Washington. Their motivations are to improve their career prospects generally. So they want Washington to understand that they are engaged in the country. They are getting good sources of information and they are reporting back. This seems to be the predominant thing. But they report what they say are facts and they also present opinions........it is important to keep these two different. In the cases of these Indian cables which are causing such a furor about bribery...such an interesting case...it is very hard to understand why the US Embassy official would lie about that to Washington. What is more interesting is under what basis was he told that information? That the US Embassy official was shown that cash? Could it have been...because this was a US issue.. to demonstrate how compliant certain parts of Indian Parliament work with US interest? Or could it have been to set up or frame another group. It is hard to see what benefit there would be in framing another group to Washington through that method. It is not clear what benefit it would be. But when we look at the cables in other contexts, they have been used and accepted as evidence in the Taylor case in Hague, they have been used in courts in Spain to reopen a rendition case involving the CIA. They have been used in a number of places, they have been accepted as quotes, as probative evidence, as genuine official documents. Of course what the officials say and how they gain their knowledge too must be investigated and interrogated.
NDTV: You seem to agree that the content of these tapes needs to be investigated. They may or may not be correct.
Assange: The comments I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh....these, to me, seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified ...absolutely false! Hillary Clinton in December last year spoke to the Indian government last year, perhaps to Prime Minister Singh directly or that level to forewarn that this material would be coming out. There is no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American Ambassador back to Washington and these should be seen in that context. That does not mean every fact in them is correct, you have to look at their sources and how they gave this information.
NDTV: Just to absolutely clarify - The defence of the Indian govt is that a) authenticity of these cables cannot be verified. They may not be correct bits of evidence at all. B) Contents of cables are just views of people and could be factually wrong or at worst just gossip. Are you absolutely confirming that the cables are genuine and that the government is wrong in saying that they cannot be verified?
Photo Linda Nylind
Assange: That is absolutely correct. There is no doubt, whatsoever, that the cables are authentic. That is why we are being so heavily attacked by the Pentagon. That is why young intelligence officer Bradley Manning has been imprisoned in United States for 299 days now. There is absolutely no doubt. The content, of course, varies on a cable by cable basis. It is wrong to suggest that these are just opinions, these are official reports made by US Ambassadors, sometime it is opinion...sometimes not. It is done in a serious capacity. For example, if this cable on bribery is incorrect then the US Ambassador in India has a lot to answer for because he has been sending back very serious reports to Washington about senior politicians and behaviour in Indian Parliament, which casts it in a very negative light. It would affect the relationship between India and United States. So either he has committed a grave error that would damage Indian and American relations and should resign over that - or the material was correct and he was reporting correctly and he had checked his facts before reporting back to Washington.
NDTV: We have actually heard from our senior former diplomats that all cables from India - no matter what or whether from a junior - go in the name of the Ambassador and all the cables from Washington to India go in the name of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obviously the Ambassador and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may not read every single cable, it just all goes in their name. This could have actually been just juniors in the Embassy and in Washington.
Assange: They don't tend to be too much more junior...it depends on the seriousness of the issue. You would probably find a political officer or an ambassador who usually clears it. By reading the content of the cable, you will see that Pauloff - that's the political officer - was told that. The content of the cable does not fabricate the Ambassador's name. For example, suppose when there is a meeting between the Embassy official or employee or political officer or Ambassador, they are named as that. What is written at the bottom of the cable going back is frequently the Ambassador or the political officer that wrote most of the material. But there is a reason for that. The Ambassador is made to read the cable and sign it off and send it out in his writing that he has approved.
NDTV: What about America's reaction to WikiLeaks. The person who is said to have leaked those diplomatic cables-- Bradley Manning is in jail, and is being treated terribly, is being kept naked for hours... but the US media and society do not seem to be doing anything about it. Why do you think there have been no angry reactions to what has been happening?
Assange: Bradley Manning is America's foremost political prisoner. The allegations against him, whether they are true or not, are of a political nature and he has been kept in solitary confinement for 299 days as a result of the political allegations that he has revealed - information like this for political reasons - to demonstrate the inequities and abuses that were happening. There are people in the United States who are angry about this. The state department spokesperson resigned over this issue. However, it is not getting any big media play...it is bubbling there but is not being aggressively picked up and that is the nature of the mainstream press of the United States. It is a very destructive thing for all of us.
That is a fact about the United States and the security sector has grown so fast and so influential that its tendrils merge into most big companies and big media companies. That is the reality of the US economy and the US media. Unfortunately the US media is so strong, aggressive and has such sophisticated distribution mechanism that the bias then pushed down in English language all over the world and to the other English speakers in the world, like the Australians, Indians, the Canadians and the British to somehow develop their own media infrastructure and to be able to resist the propaganda.
NDTV: The WikiLeaks cables on India have created a storm in Parliament. The response has been for the Opposition to accept it without question and the response of the government has been to live in denial. Two totally different responses. Is this normal behaviour to politicise your material?
Assange: In response to our publishing , the US government has taken certain steps, like to pressure banks to cut financial transactions to us. That is very revealing about the power connections between high finance and the US state department. Similarly, in the response to the cables alleging that that US state Embassy was shown cash boxes for bribing Parliamentarians, we saw something rather disturbing. We saw an immediate rush, not to deny that allegations in these facts were not true...we want to investigate properly to make sure everything is clear.. that we are innocent. Rather what we saw was an attempt to distort the record and fool the public about the nature of the material. First to say, they refused to comment at all, to suggest that the materials are not verified and that no other government accepted it. Absolutely false...that is actually the behaviour of guilty men. Man who is innocent doesn't tend to behave like that. That doesn't mean, people making those statements like Prime Minister Singh and so on are guilty of this particular crime, it suggests something that how Indian Parliamentarians and Indian politicians respond to very serious allegations. They respond through indirection, by lying and attempting to cover up the issue for the public rather than address it fully and frankly. The most serious issue in the cable, I suspect, is yet to be revealed. Just looking at what happened with other countries, that doesn't mean The Hindu is necessarily holding back what it thinks to be most important for Indians to last. In other countries they have dealt with ...you know an issue can catch fire, imagination of the public may not be the one you first think. There is quite a bit of time to get through the material...the material from Pakistan, from China.....it is likely to be interest to the Indian population.
NDTV: There is an impact of WikiLeaks and I know you are all fighting for freedom of thought and expression...if everybody from now is worried about their writings becoming public through WikLleaks, maybe they would be constrained and inhibited in their writings in case they are going to be leaked. So ironically the impact of WikiLeaks could be the end of free and fearless expression because everyone is terrified that it is going to be public...
Assange: It depends on what are you trying to express....should there be an end to frank and fearless expression of how to conduct a conspiracy which is against the public interest? Of course they should, we want to make it very hard for government officials to speak to each other in a frank and free way.
NDTV: So do you believe in the concept of official secrecy at all, or secrecy and privacy is for individuals only?
Assange: Well, privacy is for individuals, the governments try and use secrecy...sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes for a legitimate period of time... and most often, for illegitimate reasons. The big problem with secrecy is that how do you know that it is not being abused? So if somebody can just put a stamp on internal correspondence every time it's embarrassing because they are engaged in some sort of correspondence or abuse... then they can put a stamp 'secret' on it... no one can review to see whether that stamp is being correctly applied or not because in order to review it, you have to read the material. Of course it is a system that instantly escalates, the stamp starts getting on everything, confidentiality is extremely controlled...you end with a corrupt, inefficient and abusive organization. I say, of course there is time where secrecy is legitimate, but organizations and individuals must fight for it. They must really fight for it and prove it is illegitimate and there shouldn't be any false assumption that it is for only a legitimate amount of time...and after that time lapses and it ceases to be secret. That way the burden of truth is on those people who are trying to conceal things from the public. secretive
NDTV: So, would you at WikiLeaks ever publish private secrets of leaders' personal lives? Would you ever do that?
For saying in figures, the personal and political is all mixed up - who their friends are, who their relatives are is all factored in into their business and political decision- making. You can see, for example, in these cables, there is personal character, details revealed. Certainly, we think that there are many cases where personal information is not just personal, it enters into alliances and decision- making and who is someone's opponent or enemy. But as an organization, we have a very simple standard which is, we accept information of political, ethical, historical or diplomatic importance that is significant and has not been published before and is trying to be suppressed. We are not interested in people's love letters.
NDTV: How do you react to the many who accuse you of being secretive about yourself? Is that a conflict? How do you resolve that?
Assange: We are an organisation that is being harassed and attacked by a super power and of course, that requires certain defensive measures and has since 2008 at least where we had people affiliated with us being assassinated. So, that is not a matter of hypocrisy. It's a matter of a small organisation doing its best to continue carrying out its work and that includes defending us from state surveillance.
NDTV: Coming back to the cables in India, the previous set of cables, especially the ones on Afghanistan exposed the extent of Pakistan's role in terror against India. I am looking ahead at the new material that's about to come. Does it substantiate that role a little more? The Hindu newspaper has already done an excellent job in analysing all the stuff that has come out of WikiLeaks. Now, is there more big stuff to come?
Assange: There are some 6000 cables from the US embassies they have been tagged by the State Department about India. We have only just seen the first part of that now being published by our partner, The Hindu. I am sure that some of that material that we will see in the coming weeks will go into some of the Pakistani relationships. But, what we are really looking at more closely is the cables from Pakistan and those are something that are yet to be published. We are working to have those published and I am sure Indians and Pakistanis will be very interested to see what they reveal. Well, I wouldn't want to pre- judge them before they are published.
NDTV: Coming back to the impact of WikiLeaks, you have heard of widespread criticism that often loose conversations are released in WikiLeaks and some people are named who may be doing good work covertly or working underground, infiltrating and fighting against terrorism and once their names are public, their lives are in danger. What do you do about that?
Assange: This is something the Pentagon has tried to throw out every time it has been criticized by the Press, back to the 1950s. There is no allegation even by the Pentagon, even by the state department or by any American official that anything we have ever published in our entire history, has resulted to a single individual's personal or physical harm. Something that is repeatedly asserted without evidence can be dismissed without argument. We have a harm-minimisation process and clearly it has been 100% effective till date. While no organization is free from making mistakes when you deal with things of this scale and with this level of seriousness, today we have two perfect records: we have a perfect record of never having been fooled by information sent to us and we have a perfect record in having no one come to physical harm as a direct result of anything being published.
NDTV: Your WikiLeaks have generally focused on the United States. Is Julian Assange anti-United States?
Assange: Not at all. We are an organization. Through our work, we aim to protect the Press and publishing... carrying on the tradition of Madison and Jefferson. We are actually upholding the founding values of the United States. We have published materials for over 120 different countries, exposed the assassination in Kenya to East Timor, billions of dollars of corruption in Africa. So we are not at all particularly focused on the United States. Rather, we have to publish our material in order of its significance, and simply cannot turn it away because it comes to United States. The reality of the United States now is that about 30-40 per cent of its economy, directly or indirectly, is bound up to the security sector. So it has a lot of secrets, a lot of computers and it has a lot of people within its state department, within the government, with the military. We are very unhappy about the way they are conducting themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan, that leads to those brave people stepping forward to give us material...we can try and do something about it.
NDTV: In the life of Julian Assange, do you have heroes?
Assange: Well, I think Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon paper whistleblower, he has become a friend over the past couple of years and can fairly described as a hero. There are others in different fields...it is better to say there are people who engage in heroic acts. Every individual is of course human, one must be careful with the hero label. Many people call me, for example, a hero but I am a man and a human being, just like all of us.
Other articles in Professors blogg on the Swedish case Assange case
19 March 2011. Censorship of Assange-articles in the Guardian & Swedish press
12 March 2011. Opinions on Assange case and censorship in Swedish media
11 March 2011. Case Assange: Rights Activist Challenges Ethics of Swedish Courts, Media. By Andrew Kreig
· 10 March 2011. WikiLeaks aftermath. The Middle East Feminist Revolution, by Naomi Wolf
· 6 March 2011. Have Swedish Pirates Betrayed Assange?
· 3 March 2011. WikiLeaks, Revolution, and the Lost Cojones of American Journalism. By Naomi Wolf
· 1 March 201. Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens openly criticizes Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny and the Swedish legal system [extern link]
· 1 March 2011. Mark Stephen om det svenska rättsystemet . Intervju i InfoTorg Juridik av Nicholas Ringskog Ferrada-Noli [extern link]
· 28 Feb 2011. Mark Stephens: "Demand open justice for Julian Assange"
· 27 Feb 2011. Assange VS Pinochet
· 27 Feb 2011. Comments on Judge Riddle's verdict & and lawyer Jennifer Robinson's interview
· 26 Feb 2011. The Pirate Party should stand for their values. They should struggle for Assange and Wikileaks
· 24 Feb 2011, Assange's case. Witness Statement of Professor Marcello Ferrada-Noli
· 22 Feb 2011, Swedish media's censorship on Assange case
· 20 Feb 2011, Does Sweden Inflict Trial by Media against Assange?
· 18 Feb 2011. Anonymous Stop U.S. Business Plot Against, Bloggers, Unions, Rights Activists. Guest column by Andrew Kreig
· 13 Feb 2011. Karl Rove's Swedish Connections: The Controversy And The Facts. Guest-article by Andrew Kreig
· 11 Feb 2011. Matching critic on Reindfelt's involvement in the Assange case
· 11 Feb 2011. Partner At Firm Counseling Assange's Accusers Helped In CIA Torture Rendition. Guest-article by Andrew Kreig
· 10 Feb 2011. Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. Guest-article by Naomi Wolf
· 9 Feb 2011. Analysis: Assange's lawyer's error shouldn't determine the case
· 9 Feb 2011. Strongest appeal to Swedish prosecutor - "Hamlet without princess"
· 9 Feb 2011. Hamlet utan prinsessan. Åklagaren Marianne Ny starkt utmanat av Asange's advokat
· 8 Feb 2011. Objection to Sundberg-Weitman's testimony irrelevant
· 6 Feb 2011. Q & A: The Assange case and Swedish extradition
· 4 Feb 2011. Key-witnesses severely contradict state-feminist Borgström & women-accusers in Sweden's phony case against Assange
· 22 Jan 2011. Swedish PM Reindfelt lies in London on Assange extradition
· 13 Jan 2011. Bordström & Borgström VS. Wikileaks
· 11 Jan 2011. New analysis: Swedish political crusade against Assange and Wikileaks
· 29 Dec 2010. Assange's message to Swedish journalists
· 29 Dec 2010. Asssange, criminal without a crime
· 26 Dec 2010. Sweden's phony prosecution against Assange is POLITICAL and IDEOLOGICAL
· 13 Dec 2010. Afghanistan, Vilks, bomb, Sweden
· 11 Dec 2010. Sveriges Assange-anklagelser i kriget mot Wikileaks OCH yttrandefrihet
· 9 Dec 2010. Is there a CIA connection in the Swedish Assange-plot?
· 7 Dec 2010. Analysis: Why Sweden revenge against Assange
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Analysis: Why Sweden revenge against Assange
By Prof. Marcello Ferrada-Noli
No more profit among Third World countries thanks to the neutrality stand. No more international political prestige or respect for an "independent" and proud Sweden. Wikileaks buried for ever Sweden neutrality myth and its front figure Julian Assange is now due to a filthy, vulgar vendetta.
[An edited version of this article "Assange buried the Swedish neutrality myth"
was published in Second Opinion]
As the detention of Julian Assange is now implemented on behalf of Sweden, it would be necessary to clarify some issues for non-Swedish speaking audiences. Possible equivoques of terms based in direct translations of Swedish dispatches may refer not only to the Swedish case against Assange, but also on the responsibility of Swedish authorities in the production of the aggravating secret agreements with American Intelligence services and that were exposed in the diplomatic documents leaked by Assange's organization.
Compromising leaks (for the Swedes)
In the main, Assange´s organization Wikileaks has documented diplomatic traces of several agreements between Swedish government officials and envoys from American Intelligence services which occurred relatively recently, among other 2008. The content of these agreements were reported by the program Dokument inifrån of the Swedish Television 5/12 2010 [1].
Officials of the Swedish government would have themselves presented a formula to the Americans consisting in a disinformation system towards the Swedish Parliament and by extension also betraying the Swedish public as a whole. The system, euphemistically called "the informal" channel or procedure, consists in to secretly keep the nature of the contacts (and the agreements on gathering and/or transference of intelligence that ensued), letting them unknown by the constitutional and legislative powers (the Parliament).
In practice, the ultimate rationale of the "informal" procedures proposed by the Swedes is that it could guarantee a vast more extensive using of the Swedish information data, a more enhanced penetration in the integrity of Swedish citizens, etc. than the agreement on Intelligence cooperation that could eventually be accepted by the Swedish Parliament, even considered by the standards of its right-wing majority.
Impersonating heroes
Apparently trying to save both the prestige of the country and the stability of the government (and the survival of the Intelligence agreements) the Swedish conservative media have tried to present the facts above as an opposition of the Swedes against the American pressures. Swedish officials are subtlety presented in these media like "heroes". Svenska dagbladet, SvD, run for instance this thesis in an article reporting a presumably opposition of the Swedish government against the use of Sweden for CIA's prisoner-transport [2]. In fact, the alluded Wikileak telegram referred to initiatives taken by some Swedish integrity-minded SÄPO and military intelligence officers (which stopped one of the rendition CIA flights in Swedish soil). The newspaper instead attributed - unfairly, in my opinion - this act to government politicians.
It is not so that USA exercises against Sweden that kind of excessive pressure that the Swedes have to heroically oppose, as it is contended. In true, it was not the USA government and its envoys which wanted to deceive the Swedish Parliament. The Americans whished instead a formal and correct agreement. However, the even more pro American-benefit proposition (than the one from the American themselves) was all on the part of the Swedish government officials, inspired perhaps by the now public own affective allegations of the very Minister of Defence Sten Tolgfors such as the celebre "I love USA". Further, it is extremely unlike that agreements of that calibre have not been initiated or sanctioned by the Swedish ministers of Defence, Justice and Foreign Affairs.
In fact, those "informal" agreements have placed the Swedish security and military intelligence so heavily under the control and command of the Americans, that, as reported by the newspaper Expressen 7/12 2010 referring to the years ensuing 2003, Sweden Intelligence officers got the impression that they were working under direct orders of the CIA ( "Under de kommande åren förändrades svensk underrättelse-och säkerhetstjänst på ett sådant sätt att enskilda tjänstemän uppfattade det som att de arbetade på direkt beställning av CIA") [3].
"Cultural" factors fail in explaining betrayal
In many countries, public disclosures of this kind (agreements made by government officials in benefit of a foreign power and in detriment of national citizens) - particularly if were intentionally devised to keep the all thing secret not only for the public but also the country's highest legislative institution - would lead to trials for nothing less than treason. In other countries would lead to constitutional processes and imminent change of government, besides of the legal consequences for the individuals involved.
If this "natural" course of events is not likely to happen in Sweden, to a great extent would be explained by the conscious manipulation of the cultural trick "Swedish consensus". In other words, journalists and researchers, or politicians supposed to criticize or condemn the awful doings of their authorities will instead "understand" them because "this is the Swedish culture", "we are not for conflicting", and ergo all wrongdoings might be justified by a natural conflicting-avoiding character and the strive to be regarded by the world as "peaceful". And modern.
But this is not completely true. In fact Swedes are NOT naive, as some few sometimes conveniently may play they are. Swedish officials and journalists are instead highly educated, well informed, and well politically aware of what they are doing. One alternative explanation may be that by trying to keep things secretly, the Swedish officials had estimated the possible damage for Sweden's prospective political gains and economic trade with countries of other latitudes. These have in the past in many cases been possible just thanks to the Swedish declared neutrality-stand. The journalists would not like to agitate research articles against that balance. The truth is then buried. This is what we are now witnessing.
Damage control
In an outstanding piece of intellectual rescuing using the above mentioned cultural trick "Swedish consensus", professor colleague Wilhelm Agrell (called in for damage control by Dagens Nyheter, the main Swedish newspaper) publish today a debate article on the issue of the secret agreements commented above [4].
In the main, Wilhelm Agrell excuses the current government with the notion that the same "double" attitude has been practised by other governments since about six decades ago! He will not get into concrete propositions about ending such praxis, neither would he care to analyze the negative consequences of the last agreements for the integrity of the Swedish citizens (and for our national security!), or the catastrophic effects that these revelations would have for the Swedish stand elsewhere in the international scenario. Because one thing is that, judging from their political preferences, most of Swedes feel rather happy with their American strategic-minded leadership. Another thing is, however, that every single Swedish institution, not only the government but universities, foundations, etc, have profit their international prestige and positive affection from their counterparts all over world based precisely in the notion of a neutral and pacifist Sweden.
And there is yet another issue which could not go missed by Professor Wilhem Agren. Namely, the genuine risk for the national security of Sweden posed exactly by these secret agreements. The interpretation by the USA Ambassador, according to the telegrams, was that there is strong reason to believe that Sweden would not become a direct target for terrorists (SvD 6/12 2010) [5]. I genuinely hope that the Ambassador is still right, and he shall remain right in this point. But there is also strong reason to believe that terrorists had not then perceived as neither the absolutely main part of the world how engaged Sweden was and is, and eagerly wishes to be, an active part in that war. Not only regarding intelligence gathering, but above that the active Swedish military intervention in Afghanistan. It is absurd to blame Assange for the consequences (for Sweden) of those unnecessarily subservient decisions on spying their own or getting into other's belligerent operations, amid decisions taken by Swedish government individuals in their "love" for America but risking Sweden as a whole.
Not "rape"
As for Julian Assange, he is not convicted by any crime in Sweden; neither is he formally prosecuted for the crime "rape" in the sense as it is commonly conceived in the world outside Sweden, namely a violent act without partner consent and which is not here the case. Normally translations (for instance into English, Italian, or Spanish) exercised by the foreign press of texts in Swedish give often a false meaning of those "juridical" concepts with regard to the juridical culture or common sense prevailing in countries with normal, democratic, non gender-alienated judicial systems. You may observe that the Swedish newspapers still persist in their headlines on "Assange is sought for rape" without caring of give to the public details or actual categorization of the crime for which Assange is suspected on the base of a coordinating accusation of two adult Swedish women, one of the woman according to a report from Israel Shamir and Paul Bennet in Counterpunch would likely be linked to a CIA financed organization [6].
As to the "rape" suspicions (not charges) issue - as preposterous or even ridiculous as it may sound to the foreign reader (the world is actually laughing at this) - according to different lawyers' reports the all thing would in true refer to the use of a malfunctioning condom! For reasons of space, I shall develop in more detail some whereabouts of the "legal" case against Assange in a separate post.
Finally, I would like, warmly and genuinely, to invite my readers to subscribe to this statement by Ã…sa Linderborg in Aftonbladet 6/12 2010:
"Anyone who have claimed stand in defence of freedom of expression must declare that they fully shall support Assange, if USA or other attacks him or the distribution of Wikileaks' information. The one who scoff at this demand shall never again pretend being a democrat" [7].
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Censorship of Assange-articles in the Guardian & Swedish press
Is there a connection between the censorship of the same articles and from the same blog exercised in The Guardian and in the Swedish mainstream press?
[This post is supposed to be linked to the following articles: SvD "Hurtig: Jag blir förbannad", "Ingen jävsinvändning från Hurtig", "Japan varnades för brister redan 2008", AB "Stängda dörrar ett måste för att fälla", "Det är ett straff i sig med utdragna rättsprocesser", DN "Assanges advokat avvaktar om jäv". Ping at Twingly was done 19/3 2011 and 06.01 and 12.52]
Foreword
The main issues - understandably occupying most minds and hearts these days - are those related to the events in Japan and particularly the emergent risks of a nuclear-related disaster.
The fact is that WikiLeaks - the project founded by Julian Assange - had warned about the risk of such nuclear-plant catastrophe in Japan associated with the event of an earthquake.
It is reported that in December 2008, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA had warned of such catastrophe identifying "a serious problem" with nuclear reactors "in areas of Japan prone to earthquakes". The information was part of the US diplomatic cables releases by WikiLeaks. The cables also disclosed that one top IAEA nuclear safety official, Tomihiro Taniguchi, also a former manager of Japan nuclear energy security was a not adequate as to provide a safety management in case of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan as a result of earthquakes.
See more details on the above in the The Australian's report Japan syndrome shows why we need WikiLeaks.
All of us that value in high esteem the contribution to peace and humankind that Julian Assange's project has done - and that it may continue that outstanding while commanded by the civil courage of the project's first author - also value as banal, and anti-historic, the efforts of all those who with the help of fabricating pseudo-evidence, anti-personal media-campaigns and a variety of deceptions collaborate at the end for the destruction of Assange's project.
All of those useful fools from the self appointed Swedish left, or self-designated as "true" liberals, or plain libertarian impostors, and who became collaborators out of sheer naivety or false patriotism, believing acting in the defence of "Swedish interests" and "cultural" values such as perfect Swedish police traditions, perfect Swedish juridical praxis and perfect "modern" legislation, are nothing but pathetic enemies of both culture, liberalism and true equality. Equality in front of justice, and legal proceedings, to start with.
Professors blogg have with the support of internationally recognized human-rights advocates - such as Naomi Wolf, also a leading spokesperson of one most important wave in modern feminism, and attorney and journalist Andrew Kreig, Director of the Washington-based Justice-Integrity project worked to denounce such inequalities Sweden have displayed in their case against Assange. The police investigation, the irregularities in the prosecution in conjunction with the nominal accusers' "defence", the intervention of foreign political and economic interests, the sinister link to social democratic politicians in the rendition of political prisoners to the CIA, their representation in the law firm representing the "plaintiff" (the nominal Assange accusers), the vilifying role of the media in discrediting Julian Assange, etc., etc.
Professors blogg have authored half of total articles published so far in 2011 in the Swedish blogosphere on the subject "Assange", and 90 percent of all the articles in English.
The prize to offer has been severe. Professors blogg has been subject to blockade and hijacking. We do not mind that, personally. But our public have also forced to pay a ransom.
The ransom those in power will force us to pay in order to liberate our opinion from censorship is to be "honoured" with a self-inflicted injury to the integrity of such opinion. We should do like the most of Swedish bloggers, like the rest of collaborators. We should play along with the establishment's war against Assange. And then we should write unmolested, and our opinions publicized in the wings of the mighty.
We shall not:
La lotta continua
The Guardian
A Rixstep article, "Guardian Censoring Information in Assange Case", reports on censorship exercised in The Guardian against links to Professors blogg. Wikileaks Central had reported likewise (see "Possible gag order on the Guardian re Assange case?).
The report of the Guardian repeatedly erasing of links to Professors blogg was first made in WL Central. Hereby I post the reply of the The Guardian forum-member which authored the report. She is answering here to my query for details.
[Here follows Debra's email of 4 March 18:41 - subject Re: Important info. needed]
Hello Marcello,
The problem was in linking to your website and also to even mention Professors Blogg website in the text of our comment. The moderators removed at least one comment where I didn't include any link, only mentioned the name of your site.
Another time in one of my comments I mentioned Naomi Wolf's "Karl Rove, Sweden and 8 major aberrations" article and I gave the URL to her article on your website and my whole comment was removed by the Guardian moderators. But at another time I mentioned this same article again - Naomi Wolf's "8 big problems" - but I gave a link to it on another website (Newsmill, I think - the article had a slightly different title on the other site and didn't mention Karl Rove in the title) and that was NOT removed.
I also left links to articles about Thomas Bodstrom and Andrew Kreig's "Karl Rove's Swedish Connections" article on your website - both times using the URL to YOUR blog - both times the whole comment (including links) was removed.
Those are the three authors I remember.
Other Guardian readers have had exactly the same thing happen to them, but it is ALL mention of AND links to YOUR blog which are censored.
If it helps you, you can go to the Fuck Yeah Julian Assange blog because I have left detailed comments there about this whole censorship issue. If you read the days 24th, 25th, 26th February - all comments left by Debra (that is me, talking about the Guardian censorship issue) - there is more detail there.
I hope this helps.
Debra
[Debra asked me later per email 5 March 2011 09:29 "not to print my full name or email address"].
- Show quoted text -
Quoting Marcello Ferrada de Noli :
4 March 2011 15:21 - subject Important info. needed
Dear Debra,
I need to know however, which are the posts from Professors blogg that were refused to be linked or referred in The Guardian
These two questions are CRUCIAL for the publication:1. Which posts (from *Professors blogg*) were blocked. You do not need to have the exact URL or remember the exact tittle. It would be enough if you remember the main-content or the author of the blog-post/s.
2. About the problem you got with these blogs in The Guardian comments. Was the problem referred to the *linking* of any of our blogs, or the problem was that The Guardian did not accept the mentioning of Progfessors blogg or the reference to a certain post in Professors blogg.
Please reply ASAP
Marcello
--
[Here follows excerpts of Debra's first email, 1 March 2011 11:15 - subject Guardian newspaper removing readers' links to your site]
Dear Professor Ferrada-Noli,
I hope you are well. Thank you for all the time and energy you devote to informing us about the Julian Assange case.
I recently asked the Guardian newspaper why they were systematically removing my comments that contained links to your blog. I got a reply! I have forwarded the original email I received below (please be careful with the names). I have tried to publicise this censorship and have managed to get the email published on WL Central. I hope this has helped direct more people to your excellent resource.
I understand the Guardian's actions as they are vulnerable to the UK's draconian libel laws; on the other hand I believe an informed public is vital to democracy.
Thank you for any help you can give.
Kind regards,
Debra XXXX
Username = Arbed or Arbed12
(PS. Guardian moderators are leaving my detailed analyses of the legal case
untouched, for which I'm grateful. I get a lot of positive feedback from other
readers for those.)
Dear arbed, We saw your
comment asking why links to Prof Blog get removed by the moderators. All we're able to say is that certain external links potentially pose legal risk for the Guardian, and therefore have to be removed
Best
Community Moderation Team.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit guardian.co.uk - newspaper website of the year http://www.guardian.co.uk/http://www.observer.co.uk/
Uppdate. Preliminary conclusions contained in the reproduced article here below on the responsibilities of the opinion-censorship in the Swedish media apparatus were based in written information provided to us by Twingly. Twingly was specifically informed at the moment of our consultation that I was preparing an article in the issue to be published abroad. After my report was published in the Swedish Second-Opinion Twingly changed their version in 180 degrees and now affirms instead that it was not their clients, the Swedish press, that exercised censorship to the Assange-articles in Professors blogg. First they say Twingly was not the responsible and implied the newspapers moderators. Now they say the newspapers were not at all the responsible. What has happened after our publication and why Källström is giving this totally new version only those actors know.
The newspapers from their part gave inconclusive versions. Svenska dagbladet informed per email that the problem was of "technical" nature and "beyond their control", implying that it was caused by an external actor. Expressen (web-redaktionen) informed over the telephone that the responsibility of whether blogs appeared linked to their articles is clearly Twingly's. But the journalist giving this information when I talked to Expressen's web-redaktionen 17 March, 17:28 (call loged from Italy), in spite of giving her name did not wish to be quoted. Dagens Nyheter for their part plainly refused to comment. Twingly denied any wrongdoing.
AFTER we contacted Twingly the 11 of March and said that we were preparing a report on the Swedish media's blog-censorship to be published abroad, Twingly finally linked Naomi Wolf's guest-article in Professors blog to old articles (over a month ago) in the Swedish press. One of the censured articles and that became the "pilot case" was Naomi Wolf's article in Professors blog the 10 of February 2011 dealing with the alleged Karl Rove's connection in the Assange case and the wrong doings in the police investigation ("Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. By Naomi Wolf").
In an essay of sheer deception, Twingly tries now to produce as "probe" that no censorship has been exercised against Wolf's above article by showing screen shots that visualise such post is linked in the media article (see comment below by Martin Källström). What Källström hides is that they linked Naomi's article only the 11 of March after our announce on disclosing - and that they took the screen shots after that date.
The question on who has been behind this request of censorship in the Swedish media apparatus will remain surely unanswered from the part of the authors of such initiative, or from their collaborators.
The email-correspondence between Martin Källström, Twingly's CEO, is published down below as an Appendix of this article. The readers will judge their selves. For my part, case closed.
Summary. This analysis is a follow up of a report in Second-Opinion ("Svensk media censurerar i Assange-fallet", 2011-02-21) reviewing possible actors in the alleged censorship of the Swedish media apparatus towards opinion-articles. One conclusion here is that the link-search engines cannot be held responsible for the filtering [see update above]. Further, dissimilar levels regarding censorship are found among different newspapers. In Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet problems in the likings could have been in certain cases technically-based, while in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter those would be clearer ascribed to an active policy of selective censorship towards critical blog-opinions and analyses. [media 1,2,3,4,5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
In the context of analysing the Swedish Trial by Media against Assange I have previously reported the problems in the linking process (to Swedish mainstream-media articles) of some guest-columns and own analyses published in Professor blog. Regarding the system used by Swedish newspapers in order to display in their articles links to blog-posts related to those issues, I reported in the above referred article an earlier commentary by Martin Källström, Twingly's Chief Executive Officer, which manifested among other:
''The newspapers which are connected to Twingly get reports from their readers if the content of a blog is inadequate. When such report arrives in Twingly's administration-gear, intervenes the "moderator" (newspaper's Web-controller) and look into the blog's content. . ." "You have a serious and good blog, I cannot think that some newspaper would blockade your article.''
I commented: "In the above phrase "some newspaper would blockade your
article" Twingly unequivocally admits that a Swedish
newspaper would exercise censure against the publications whose content is deemed inappropriate. The question remains: who authored the request for censuring BOTH Naomi Wolf's and Andrew Kreig's articles about Karl Rove, Assange and Sweden, published in the Swedish based Professors blog?"
In a letter of 11 March 2011 to the Company's Executive Director Martin Källström, Professors blogg asked Twingly Sweden to kindly help us to elucidate these two items:
"A) Where in the linking process (Professors blogg - Twingly - Swedish newspaper) the referred censorship or filtering of the referred linked articles is exercised? B) What would be the reason for the said censorship?"
Twingly answered promptly and manifested that "the most probable cause is a technical issue, and if so it will be very easily resolved." The Company added that "If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why and I'm sure they will publish the link after talking to you."
The fact is, as I reported previously in Second-Opinion, that I DID talk with the newspapers about this situation for over a month ago. Unfortunately, in one case (SvD) the message was inconclusive and in the other (DN), the consultation was plainly disregarded by the newspaper which did not answer at all.
The link-search engine
After Twingly investigated the technical issue in the base of a sample of links I provided, they concluded that their linking procedure it has been made correctly, according to their prevalent criteria in the "picking-up" of links from the blogosphere. Namely, the engines surveillance all blogs and eventually detect those links corresponding to media-articles provided those media-links are located among the first fifty links included in a blog-post text.
This is the synthesis of the positive and negative outcomes of the test using as pilot case a blog-post I provided. In this particular post (the pilot case) I had recently added extra links corresponding to a list of new articles published on the same subject in Profesors blogg: I) Technical staff at Twingly examined first that blog-post and they anticipated a negative result in pinging, meaning that the pilot blog-post could not have been possibly detected by the search-engine because of a) the number of links in the post exceeded N= 50, and b) the media-links were placed in the text in a position below the inserted link number 50, which it is the cut off in the engine's surveillance for each blog. II) Then I moved higher up in the text of that same blog-post (the experiment pilot-post) the links corresponding to several related media-articles, in order to allow them to be detected before all the other links. III) Finally, using that modified blog-post Twinlgy performed the Ping procedure and this time the pilot blog-post was linked almost instantaneously. I checked from my site the first of those links in the pilot blog-post and confirmed that the ping process functioned.
The above procedure would indicate that, according to an standard technical procedure, Twingly would have performed the linking from the blog towards the newspapers' articles in every case in which the media-articles links were correctly placed (before N= 50). This then would rule out that the problem would have been occasioned by a failure of Twingly's technical procedure specifically in
regard to my pinging.
Although Professors blogg have never signalled Twingly as "THE responsible" for these non-linking episodes, I had mentioned Twingly as one of the actors operating in the linking system with reference to the articles in PB. Those assumptions regarding the linking system in the media apparatus have to be reconsidered.
[see update above].
In concrete, my conclusion is that Twingly has to be ruled out as a possible actor within the media apparatus in the filtering or censorship of Swedish blog-articles [see update above].
Which leave us with the rest of the actors.
The owners
There are no conclusive studies on Corporate censorship in Sweden, although the consolidation of ownership in Sweden's main newspapers reduces the number of owners basically to two: Bonnier (principally) and Schibsted. The newspapers usually linked by Swedish blogs are Dagens Nyheter (owned by Bonnier), Svenska Dagbladet (owned 99,4% by Schibsted), Aftonbladet (owned 49,9% by Schibsted, and then LO), and Expressen (owned by Bonnier).
As I have already stated in article on the case Assange I published in Newsmill, I would not believe that there would be such determinant censorship existing in Sweden as exercised from the owners of the newspapers towards the editors or newspapers staff. This should include the on-line editions. Ergo, this actor is also ruled out.
The Swedish newspapers
With the help of Twingly's "rules of the game" criteria which they provided me I tested anew the linking processes departing from Professors blogg's articles on the Assange case.
Twingly has given guarantees that provided the links to the media articles is localized in the blog-text within the range of the first 50 included links, the article would be picked up by Twingly and definitely be sent to the newspapers so they could placed in their blog-list linking to their respective article.
As referred above, the test I performed 11 March, still in contact with Twingly, resulted in that I finally could confirm that the "pilot blog-article", as we saw almost immediately, had became visibly as linked in the newest article of SvD regarding the Assange-theme. I had also linked the pilot post at the same time to an article in DN. Testing over and everything looked all right. I thanked Twingly.
However, as I saw it few hours later, the same article did not appear linked to the article of Dagens Nyheter. Astonishingly, Dagens Nyheter instead ran a message at the bottom of the DN article stating: "This article has no blog-posts" [Artikeln saknar blogg-poster].
Further, the "test-article" from Professors blog also had disappeared from the new SvD article - as we saw instants after doing the linking test med Twyling - although it remained (still until now, a day after) in the SvD's older articles.
In the context of the present analysis, it is highly relevant to corroborate here that the very same article ("Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. Guest-article by Naomi Wolf") that 11 March with the assistance of Twingly staff it became finally linked (to some of the articles it was meant to), had not been accepted by the newspapers during the originally linking-process I performed manually on the 10 February 2011.
And this, particularly considering the fact that the article of Naomi Wolf in its original edited version in Professors blogg contained only 28 links all together
(including n= 11 "labels")
prior the given media-links, ergo absolutely within the N= 50 consecutive-links range determined by Twingly.
As source for the above I have the two edited versions of that guest-column of Naomi Wolf as confirmed to me per email by Blogger 2/10/2011 12:30:00 AM respectively 2/10/2011 02:56:00 PM (with the links to the newspaper-articles included).
All which reinforce the panorama on that is not Twingly, but the Swedish main newspapers which have in the past exercised this arbitrary filtering.
In the same fashion, there are other articles from Professors blogg, which, in spite of falling within the above described "50-links limit" neither have been linked in requested media articles. One example is my analysis "Does Sweden Inflict Trial by Media against Assange?" of 20 February 2011. The article has a total of 36 links in the text preceding the media-links which appear at the end of the article. The blog-link was filtered by most of the articles in the Swedish mainstream media in spite of the direct relevancy of the subject treated in conjunction to such articles.
Yet another example of link-censorship situations, in which the blog-posts was not linked at all by the Swedish mainstream press on spite it treated the very same subject as in the newspaper article, is the Professors blogg' analysis "Comments on Judge Riddle's verdict & and lawyer Jennifer Robinson's interview" (27 Feb 2011). I essayed to link this post to the article in SvD "Hurtig: Jag blir förbannad" of 24 Feb 2011. At the time of the linking the article in PB had only n= 33 links (or N= 44 in case n= 11 labels are also counted as "links" in the process. Further 3 links were added 7 March). In other words, all within the range of the 50 links operated by the Twingly system. The article was not linked, as seen in the list of blogs appearing at the end of the SvD article.
The pictures below correspond to the blogs listed (two pages) in the Article "Hurtig: Jag blir förbannad" as it was seen 12 March 2011. Professors blogg's post Comments on Judge Riddle's verdict & and lawyer Jennifer Robinson's interview is NOT included in the list
Finally:
I have encountered the following situation regarding the newspaper Expressen.
Just beside the article at Expressen 10 March 2011 "Polisen vän med kvinna som anmälde Assange", the newspaper run a markedly visible box stating "Do blog about this article. Comment and link this article to your blog. Then your article it will be seen here". ["Blogga om den här artikeln. Kommentera och länka till den här artikeln i din blogg. Då kommer ditt inlägg att synas här"] and they give also there instructions as how to link Pinga din blogg hos Twingly så hittar vi den.- However, as seen in this picture taken 12 March 2011, Expressen conceals the phrase "Show the most linked / most recent blog-article" with the trick of using white fonts against a white background (so the text listing the eventual blogs cannot possibly be visualized, for the background has the same white colour!).
Of course there were many posts in the blogosphere following that Expressen's article. As listed in Knuff.se that day several bloggers even characterized the referred Expressen's article as a pseudo-scoop [see update above].
Further, dissimilar levels regarding the discussed censorship are to be found among different newspapers. In the case of Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet problems in the likings from our blog could have been in certain cases technically-based, while the case of the main Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter it would be clearer ascribed to an active policy of selective censorship towards critical blog-opinions. Finally, the situation reported here about newspaper Expressen has to be investigated further, as a technical problem could explain the absence of the above mentioned blog-listing. [see update above]. The denouncing of all cases regarding Swedish media which essay selectively blog-linking with regard to the covering of the Swedish case against Assange, should be strongly continued until such censorship praxis it brings to an end.
Conclusion: A selective censorship from sectors of the mainstream press has been exercised against blog-opinions and fact-based analyses contradicting articles by that media, in connection to the case Assange as reported in Professors blogg. Who has authored this censorship initiative or been able to implemented is unclear, as actors in the Swedish media apparatus blame each other.
The arrogance displayed by some actors in the Swedish media in their pursuit of censorship, to hide, minimize or distort the truth on the irregularities in the Swedish case against Assange and Wikileaks including those committed by the Swedish media themselves contrast with the humble yet effective dedication of thousands independent analysts, nonetheless professional, unbound and liberate, gathered in the world forums and blogospheres.
Sweden complains these days about prestige losses abroad, but Swedes should start by protesting and demand a fair media report on this and all issues affecting the Nation. Also a significant part of the budget allowing these media to indulge in such discussible ethical adventures, are in fact public funds. The public should own the truth. Those in power should own the shame.
Email correspondence between Twingly's CEO Martin Hellström and M Ferrada-Noli 11 - 15, 2011
(some of this correspondence was also published as commentaries in Second-Opinion).
Marcello Ferrada-Noli : Second reply in Second-Opinion to Martin Källström's comment 14 March
Den 15 Mars 2011 08:46:588
After my comment to Martin Källström here bellow, I received an answer from him per email; he did not send it here as a public comment at difference with his first reply. In such email, Källström does a 180-degrees turn with reference to his previous statements to us on the possible role of the newspapers Twingly's clients - with regard to my alleged complains of link-censorship. As he has not made this communication public, neither I can reproduced here as a whole. I will thou publish it in Professors blog together with all the correspondence with H, provided he agrees.
I state in the meantime the following:
1. I have NEVER received an information from Källström prior to the publication of this article in Second-Opinion 14 March 20011, on that "none of your posts have ever been removed by newspaper moderators. I just want to be clear that this is the information you have received from us." (Källström email 14 March, 11:17:51)
2. Quite at the contrary, Källström did expressly write to us "If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why. . ." (Källström email of 11 March, 11:17).
I have in no possible fashion misrepresented in my article what Källström has himself said in his email communications. I have quoted him exactly as he wrote and I have not given my conclusions as his opinions. I even wrote before my signature "THE OPINIONS HERE ARE EXCLUSIVELY MINE".
In the main, the issue was about a complain concerning link-censorship, as illustrated among other with the filtering 10 February 2011 (please observe, 10 February) of Naomi Wolf's article in Professors blogg "Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case". At the date of that original ping, effectuated in several occasions on the 10 February, the article fully complied with the Twingly rules. But it was not linked. Earlier, Källström said to us it was not Twingly that blocked posts that complied with the rules. Now he says it was not the newspapers. Who was then if not Twingly or the newspapers?
Finally, Wolf's article visualized in the screenshots referred now by Källström in his first commentary here (http://i.imgur.com/OHlJD.png) corresponds to the ping done by Twingly only three days ago, the 11 of March, long AFTER the public complain we made, and in conjunction with our consultation to Källström 11 March 2011. We are of course pleased that the article is finally linked to the media even if it was published in Professors blogg for over 30 days ago (as shown in the list), and referred to old articles published by that time.
Marcello Ferrada-Noli, 14 March 2011
Reply |Marcello Ferrada-Noli to Martin Källström, 15 March, 10:01
Martin, your email of 14 March 2011, 17.51 is preposterous:
1. About "none of your posts have ever been removed by newspaper moderators. I just want to be clear that this is the information you have received from us."
This is a plain fabrication. You have NEVER affirmed to us, before this email, that the newspapers' moderators have never removed our posts. At the contrary, what you have said instead is "If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why. . ." (Källström email of 11 March 2011, 11:17).
2. About "If any such moderation would have taken place, we would see it in our database logs, since no moderation can be done if not through our system." This is absolutely the FIRST time you are mentioned this. Quite at the contrary, you NEVER ruled out the possibility that the moderators would have to stop the links to our posts (see for instance item 1, above).
3. About "Feel free to continue to misrepresent this information". What information are you talking about? The information you DID NOT give to us? Or the one you gave but now you pretend to deny? How dare you Martin Källström to produce such statements while everything I have quote from you it was written by yourself in black and white?
I would like ask you here for your agreement to publish in Professors blogg the complete correspondence between Twingly and us. As the reader will be able to see in the email exchange, there is no such information to either interpret or misrepresent, as you wrongly, and unmerited, accuse.
Finally:
"Misrepresentation" is defined as "a fraudulent representation with the purpose to deceive". Those are a very serious accusation which, by having whatsoever no ground, would make you fully liable. For is a behaviour that I will not accept, at all. I have quoted you exactly as you have written. I never in my article mentioned my opinions as been yours. What I said instead, and pristine clear before my signature was: THE OPINIONS HERE ARE EXCLUSIVELY MINE"
Sincerely
Marcello Ferrada-Noli
Reply |Martin Källström to Macello Ferrada de Noli, 14 March, 17:51
[this email was not sent by Källström to Second opinion, only to my private email address]
14 March
Dear Marcello.
Thank you for this. What I'm trying to get across to you is that none of your posts have ever been removed by newspaper moderators. I just want to be clear that this is the information you have received from us. If any such moderation would have taken place, we would see it in our database logs, since no moderation can be done if not through our system. Feel free to continue to misrepresent this information, but if you do please take note that in doing so you are expressing the belief that you have received false information from me. If so, I certainly will respect your belief and your freedom to express it, but I feel very sorry that you do not have more confidence in me..
Best regards,
Martin
Answer in Second-Opinion to the comment 14 March from Twingly's CEO Martin Källström
Marcello Ferrada-Noli
Dear Martin,
1. On the "one blog at the time rule". I thank you for that information. I had perhaps figure it out of my own, if not were for the fact that I have seen from time to time in the articles' blog-lists two blog-posts from the same blogger, from different dates.
2. I also tried to make clear that not all my articles have been neglected in the linking process. Only those in the group Assange-subject, and in this group those that specifically treated, mentioned or linked to articles on the alleged Rove connection to such case in Sweden. You can see a possible rationale for this in my previous article in Second-Opinion on this matter, as there are some journalists apparently well situated in the corridors of power, and self declared Rove fans, which have openly advocated for the action to stop Naomi's article from circulation in the blogosphere. I can also tell you that in a later occasion I have tested to send the same material from my other registered blog. The first time it went through, but refused afterwards.
3. About Noemi Wolf's guest-column 10 Feb 2011. Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. Guest-article by Naomi Wolf (the first one); it did comply with the Twingly norms (the 50-links limit) the first time I tried to link it. The ping functioned but the article was not linked at the newspaper level. I believe I explain that clearly in my recent article.
I greatly appreciate your help in all this, and from your staff, and judging from the recent developments, I have the impression that this filtering episodes will not occur that easy in the future.Kind regards
Marcello
Comment published in Second-Opinion by Twingly's CEO Martin Källström
Den 14 Mars 2011 16:07:23
Martin Källström
Hello Marcello,
Thank you for inviting me to comment on this post. In spite of my efforts to be as thourough as possible in describing how Twingly works, I'm truly sorry that I failed to provide enough information. I wish you had included your concerns above in the information you provided to me, in which case I could have addressed them properly before.
Twingly would not work at all without a few limitations. One of the limitations is that any specific blog only can contribute a single blog post to each article. This limitation is in place because otherwise Twingly backlinks would be far too inviting for spammers, and one blog could simply link dozens of blog posts to the same article to mechanically dominate the debate there.
If you look at these screenshots from some of the articles that you have linked to in your blog: http://i.imgur.com/OHlJD.png , you can see that your posts certainly are not banned from the newspapers. However, you can notice that your blog only appears once on each article. In the cases where you have linked more than once to the same article, only the latest blog post is linked from that specific article.
If you or any of your readers have similar concerns in the future (no matter how small!), I would like to encourage you to get in touch with us at support@twingly.com so that we can sort out what is going on.Best regards,
Martin Källström
CEO Twingly
Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 14 March, 14:57
Hi,
I would like to have your comments (off the record if you like) on these two texts. I have mentioned you both in Acknowledgements.
Please observe that two erratas (seen in "Kommentarer" section), are waiting to be corrected in the Second-Opinion text.
Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 15:56
OK, thanks
Marcello
Martin Hellström to Marcello Ferrada de Noli 11 March, 15:41
Hi Marcello,
It seems to be working out so far, but please don't hesitate to let us know if you have more questions.
Just note that we don't have support during weekends, so Kristoffer won't be able to reply between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.
Best regards,
Martin
Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 15:41
Dear all,
Now the linking procedure is functioning and Naomi's article is linked accordingly.
I thank Martin, Kristoffer and the Twingly support-staff for this valuable clarification. I feel of course relieved and I will author a corresponding explanation in Professors blogg.
Although this, unfortunately, does not change my analysis on the Mainstream Media article-production in the Assange case (both in the issues of objective-content and characterization ad-hominem) my assumptions regarding the linking system in the media apparatus have to be reconsidered.
I also like to mention that in no instance during this process I have signaled Twingly as "the responsible" for this non-linking episodes.
With best regards
Prof. Marcello Ferrada-Noli
Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 11:33
Dear Martin,
Martin Hellström to Marcello Ferrada de Noli 11 March, 11:17
Hello Marcello,
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The most probable cause is a technical issue, and if so it will be very easily resolved.
If it is a technical issue, then it is Twingly's fault and responsibility that your blog posts have not appeared. If this is the case I deeply apologize beforehand and promise that we will resolve it as quickly as possible.
If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why and I'm sure they will publish the link after talking to you.
But since you have provided the sample links which is all the information we need to investigate the cause, let's do that. Please be patient and wait for us to look into it. Rest assure that we will resolve this in a timely fashion.
Best regards,
Martin Källström
Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 10:31
To
Martin Källström, Twingly CEO
Dear Mr. Martin Källström,
I wonder whether you would help me to understand the situation I have with linking of my blog-articles (I publish the Swedish-based Professors blogg ) to main Swedish newspapers using Twingly system.
1. I run the said blog since 2005. I started to link to articles in the Swedish media from early and I have even advocated in this article on Twingly for the use of this unique service. Prior the covering in my blog of the case Assange I had never before experienced any problem with the linking from Professors blogg's articles to articles published in the Swedish mainstream media.
2. However, the linking from several articles published in my blog during the last weeks, either authored by myself or by prominent American attorneys or human-rights journalists as Andrew Kreig and Naomi Wolf, have been denied.
These are authors of notable intellectual prestige and with very many texts published in books or column form. As an example, both of them have a column in The Huffington Post, the leading journalist publication in the USA.
I mention the above in making a point that they are authors/journalists with recognized experience in editing and publishing articles, books and columns as to accordingly provide their published analyses, sources, etc. with utter professionalism.
3. What I need now is to establish the these two items:
A) Where in the linking process (Professors blogg - Twingly - Swedish newspaper) the referred censorship or filtering of the referred linked articles is exercised.
B) What would be the reason for the said censorship
The most recent among these articles (with denied linking) is WikiLeaks aftermath. The Middle East Feminist Revolution, by Naomi Wolf . The media links essayed were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, (corresponding to DN, SvD, Expressen and Aftonbladet).
I would greatly appreciate for an ASAP reply by you in this matter, as I am urged by a USA human-rights publication to report on this episode.
With best regards
Prof. Marcello Ferrada-Noli
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
![[Image: asange-leaks-2.jpg]](http://www.novakeo.com/images/asange-leaks-2.jpg)
The British magistrate court has decided to surrender Julian Assange to the Nordic Amazons who were hunting for his head pending appeal. Thus the long Saga of the Broken Condom, or whatever name by which it will become known to posterity, took a definite turn for the worse. The judge decided to honor the European Arrest Warrant issued by man-eating Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Julian has appealed to the High Court, ensuring that the saga will go on as a side divertissement to the main story, Cablegate.![[Image: asange-leaks-2.jpg]](http://www.novakeo.com/images/asange-leaks-3.jpg)
The British magistrate court has decided to surrender Julian Assange to the Nordic Amazons who were hunting for his head pending appeal. Thus the long Saga of the Broken Condom, or whatever name by which it will become known to posterity, took a definite turn for the worse. The judge decided to honor the European Arrest Warrant issued by man-eating Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Julian has appealed to the High Court, ensuring that the saga will go on as a side divertissement to the main story, Cablegate.![[Image: assange_interpol_red_notice.jpg]](http://www.greenleft.org.au/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-image/assange_interpol_red_notice.jpg)
