Global Review: Secrets and Changes

Wikileaks:

This week, Wikileaks has released what it calls "The Gitmo Files." These documents have an in-detail account of everything about prisoners include health reports, treatment and overall conditions of the infamous prison. 

So far as I can see, the only media outlet that has caught up on it so far is a Wikileaks former-partner: The NYTimes. Their direct relationship seems to have ended after a feud between the two organizations, but the NYTimes was able to get the documents through an "anonymous source." Since putting up its paywall, I viewed by 20 free articles, in the first ten days of the month and have since been banned or asked to pay. 

The documents also detail the governments guide for rating the threat level of detainees, in what they call the "Threat Matrix."

When I have the time, I'll delve deeper into the documents but some important highlights include:

• military analysts sometimes ignored serious flaws in the evidence, 
• releasing some wrongly judged a minimal threat and 
• holding others who were no threat.

The Times has also posted a Note for the Reader that I think everyone should read. Also posted (and more importantly) is a public government letter from the Pentagon about the release of the information, that you should also read before following the topic further. You can read it here. 

With time constraints and limited media look-in so far, I'll post on it as soon as I can with my own looks into the files. If you are a loyal reader, then you should know that I'm an avid supporter of what Wikileaks does and have defended them many times in the past, see here and here. Let's hope these documents reveal important things!

Obama and Syria:

U.S. officials have confirmed to Haaretz, that it is considering possible sanctions against Syria  as a response to its crackdown on democracy protests. This following the administrations intentional ignorance of the crackdown of protests in the small capital of Bahrain.

The administrations influence on Syria is limited, however such a move is obviously based on Syria's alliance to Iran (and its ties to Hamas and Hezbollah). There have been several reports that show Iranian fighters and officers aiding Syria in its crackdown.

I think that something must be done to stop the crackdown and help promote democracy in a nation where a minority (the Alawites, a branch of Shia Islam) rule over the majority (87% of the population is Sunni Muslim).

The move by the U.S. comes days after President Saleh of Yemen agreed to step out of office in a deal to end his country's civil strife, due to regional meetings with Gulf nations (most likely pressured by the United States).

Although I support any move to help protesters establish a democracy in the region, I also think (as I've said before many times) that the U.S. needs a more even handed approach with the goal of promoting democracy as a central tenet of its foreign policy (using different means in different countries).

There is much to be said about the geopolitics of the region, and one that deserves more than half a post! I'll be on it in no-time!

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My Case for Wikileaks

Wikileaks: I just can't get enough of it. If you've been living under a rock and you don't know what Wikileaks is, I wrote a previous blog post about it here; It's just a brief overview of the organization and some of the things it has done.

We can spend all day debating the ethics behind the action. In my opinion it serves as an outlet for whistle blowers. In other words, people steal things such as documents or videos and pass them on to organizations like Wikileaks who then verify and publish them. From this point, Wikileaks is pretty much a news outlet of activists (unless they solicit for illegal documents, which I don't think they do). If that's the case, what Wikileaks does is legal but what the whistle blowers who steal the documents is illegal. A debate about the ethics of the whistle blowers' actions will be left for another time. But let me make this case for Wikileaks: Let's imagine a world without this organization. There are much more leaks than just the huge ones that have made headlines recently. By looking back, I realized that so many important leaks were put out by Wikileaks at a time when this organization wasn't even named because no one thought it was important.

Wikileaks Wall paper!

If the world didn't have Wikileaks we wouldn't know about:

1. Abuse in Guantanamo Bay: where inmates were denied access to the Red Cross for 4 weeks at a time (a crime under international law) and were rewarded for good behavior by being provided toilet paper. (Dec. 2007)
2. Sarah Palin's Email: it was found that the former Governor was using her personal email for official business to avoid state laws that regulated it keeping leaders accountable by having them as public records.
3. BNP Membership List: began a debate in Britain about the extreme right wing party and why people would want to join it. (Nov. 2008)
4. Trafigura Report: detailed how companies were dumping gasoline in the Ivory Coast without much regulation and would have left it there without treatment. (Oct.2009)
5. Climategate Emails: Revealed 1000 Scientists' emails at a university that showed they were distorting their global warming research to better prove that it was man-made and get more funding for their research and ventures. (Nov. 2009)
6. Sept. 11 pager messages: Half a million pager messages were released from people in the buildings, outside, those who died and others who escaped. It gave us a more detailed look at what happened the day and what people were saying and doing. (Nov. 2009)
7. Apache Helicopter shoots journalists: This is the leak that made Wikileaks internationally known. In all the leaks past this media just said "some organization" leaked this information. This leak, gave Wikileaks it's brand name. The video showed the U.S. army shooting all, killing most, and wounding the rest of a group of civilians and 2 Reuters Reporters (who died). (April 2010)
8. Afghan War Logs: Tens of thousands of documents released showing the Taliban get substantial support from a U.S. ally: Pakistan (experts in the region already knew this, but there were no official documents stating it for the public till now). It also showed possible abuses by coalition forces toward Afghans and that U.S. has a secret assassination squad. (July 2010) Here is Assange in his own words on these documents.
9. Iraq War Logs: 400,000 documents revealing evidence for the torture of Iraqi civilians by coalition forces as well as more detailed accounts of death such as 66,000 "violent deaths" as well as an understatement of total deaths of the U.S. government by 15,000 people; in other words, the government purposely understated the death toll. (October 2010)
10. Cablegate leak: 250,000 diplomatic documents that show massive amounts of information from the State Department ordering it's diplomats to spy on UN representatives, to Arab states with Israel working to form a militia in Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, and massive tensions between the U.S. and Russia: which is trying to regain it's former global power by expanding regionally.(Nov 28th 2010)

Not listed were the Australian blacklist which detailed an attempt by the Australian government's attempt to create a firewall that would block any content that the government didn't see as favorable for it. Of those pages were Wikipedia pages about certain historical events. Also not shown is was "How to stop Wikileaks Manual" by the British military that aimed to do what the title implied by this manual to all it's soldiers. There are also thousands of other documents there were released that had great impact on individual nations like Kenya, Ivory Coast, and organizations the the Church of Scientology. For the lists see here, and here by the Daily Telegraph.

Imagine a world where we didn't know all of this? We should realize that we are living history. As we speak Wikileaks has released documents showing the Sudanese President (wanted for crimes against humanity) has stashed 9 billion dollars from oil revenues into foreign accounts for himself. It also revealed how China pursues it's foreign policy and economic development without regard to moral objections by supporting dictators for their natural resources (sounds like the U.S. also). Wikileaks is showing us that a Bangladeshi "death squad" was trained by British forces before it went off and killed innocent people. We also discover (because of the organization) that Yemen doesn't have stable control of its radioactive material and is most vulnerable to be lost to the wrong hands. It's okay to show documents about these dictators but not of western superpowers? That is a very weak argument.

In a TED talk dated July of 2010, Julian Assange (Wikileaks Director) explains why the world needs an organization like Wikileaks. In it, right off the bat, the host makes a great point: Wikileaks has, by itself, released more classified documents than the entire world's media combined.

Meanwhile the CIA has created a "WTF" (Wikileaks Task Force) to keep track of documents and assess the damage to the U.S. government. Although, it is almost impossible to stop an organization like Wikileaks legally or practically speaking: See here.

The only reasonable objection I've ever heard against Wikileaks is that these leaks can endanger many lives. To them I would show these letters between Wikileaks and the U.S. government. Wikileaks actively tries to blank out the names of those who could potentially be harmed but the government won't partake in it (for obvious reasons that they are stolen). Furthermore, as Mr. Assange likes to say time and time again in interviews: No one has been hurt or killed by any of the leaks. I believe in his newest interview with MSNBC he repeated the statement.

With all the controversy surrounding the organization, Wikileaks has announced it will release another 3 million more documents. If true (and it has never backed down on any of it's statements), the organization would outdo itself for the 3rd time and break it's own record of largest leak in U.S. (if not world) history. At the end of that last article about the 3 million more documents, there is an important point: Even the Pentagon admits that there have been no reprisals as a result of the Wikileaks' leaks. You can find all these documents on their website.

So we can debate whether the people stealing these documents are unethical in their behavior, but, now that they are out, how can anyone want the information returned?  These leaks have revealed to us more about governments and corporations than any other media organization the the world (maybe even history). Can we say no to that? Can we condemn the actions of even the hackers and people who stole the documents when the leaks will inevitably change the history books and our perspective of some many different events in the U.S. and the world? For me, I applaud Wikileaks and even Bradley Manning (if he is in fact guilty) for publishing these documents; Reporters Without Borders recently sent the U.S. government an open letter supporting Wikileaks: see here.  They have helped seriously keep governments and corporations in check. With no evidence to prove anyone has been harmed and real accountability all I can say is bring on another 3 million documents!

Note: All these pictures are wallpapers that Wikileaks provides on this page of it's website. Scroll down all the way to the bottom for the pictures.

Julian Assange

With all that has been going around with who I would call a true "International Man of Mystery," there is no way I was going to avoid the subject. But a quick recap for those who don't know much about Julian Assange and Wikleaks (I'll bullet them, so if you know all this, just skip over to the paragraph):

• Basically Wikileaks is an international nonprofit organization that accepts, verifies, and publishes submitted documents via it's website and media partners, most notably the NYTimes (at least here in the U.S).
• It was started by Julian Assange in 2006 and within it's first year has close to a million documents sent to it. 
• Wikileaks NEVER asks or knows who sends the information. The intent of the person is irrelevant if the documents are real. In 2010 it made national news when it released a 2007 video of U.S. forces killing Iraqi civilians and 2 Reuters reporters.You can see the full clip uncut and unedited here and a shorter version here. 
• In the same year Wikileaks released what is called the "Afghan War Logs" which is 76,900 documents about the U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan that weren't available to you and I previously.
• In October 2010 it released some 400,000 documents called the "Iraq War Logs" that detailed much of the undisclosed information of the war effort in Iraq. 
• Finally, as of November, Wikileaks has just started releasing another 250,000 diplomatic cables that detail everything from UN relations to those between Russia and the U.S. or about different conflicts in the Middle East. All these can be seen (and downloaded if you really want to) at their website: Wikileaks.

So they are releasing these newest cables (at a horribly slow pace) to the world via their website as well as partnerships with different media partners. I won't go on about how they verify their documents but here is their own description of the process.

 If you want to know more details about them to go their Wikipedia page or from their own "About Us" section on their website.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Having a better understanding of the organization, we now have the U.S. government and Sweden looking to destroy the organization because it keeps on leaking things. Why Sweden you ask? Julian Assange likes to say that the party in power and "certain leaders" are his enemies and instigated "rape charges" against him simply to get rid of him. This wouldn't be the first time that the leader of Wikileaks is under attack and has been on the run from governments; it is in his line of work. Since then, Interpol put out a red warning for the capture of Assange for the allegations. Although I'm always used to taking the side of the rape victim first, the facts seem suspicious. I won't comment further on those allegations.

The biggest issue here and now, is if Julian Assange is extradited to the United States does the Justice Department have a case against him to be sent to jail. If my legal study tells me anything, simply accepting stolen material than publishing it is perfectly legal under the Espionage Act as shown by the Supreme Court case New York Times v. United States. The Justice Department is searching to find out if Wikileaks in any way solicited Pvt. Manning (the alleged person who leaked the documents) to give them the information and break the law. If so, they can be persecuted under the Espionage Act. Furthermore, some fear that Julian Assange has talked his way into being applicable to the Act.

This all should be very interesting to watch especially when you realize that this is all history in the making. How it will end will affect generations to come in the legal applications of the Espionage Act, the explosion of whistle blower websites like Wikileaks, and our image of transparent government.