Glenn Greenwald: Prosecute leaker!

Glenn Greenwald wrote a funny column yesterday at Salon.com. In his entry, Greenwald writes about a new leak that occurred yesterday, and urges the Obama administration to prosecute the leaker.

Greenwald writes:

A serious leak of classified information has just taken place -- which, as we all know, is a dastardly crime for which the harshest punishment is merited. To make matters even more grave, this time the unauthorized disclosure has taken place during A Time of War, resulting in the illegal publication of sensitive information about the nation's enemy. The leak was transmitted to Associated Press, which then published it to the world:

Libyan state television showed blackened and mangled bodies that it said were victims of airstrikes in Tripoli. . . . A U.S. intelligence report on Monday, the day after coalition missiles attacked Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound in the capitol, said that a senior Gadhafi aide was told to take bodies from a morgue and place them at the scene of the bomb damage, to be displayed for visiting journalists. A senior U.S. defense official revealed the contents of the intelligence report on condition of anonymity because it was classified secret.

I wonder if Eric Holder will shortly announce an investigation to find out who is responsible for this leak? Will the guilty party be charged with a capital crime and be held in solitary confinement near a cell occupied by Bradley Manning? Only time will tell. Thankfully, AP has granted anonymity to this courageous whistleblower and will hopefully safeguard his identity in the event that a criminal investigation ensues. After all, leaking information that is "classified secret" is a crime which this administration takes very, very seriously.

Greenwald raises a question here that I wish he would sometimes make more specific: Is it a good idea that the US is increasingly practicing arbitrary legal judgments? Should not a law dictate the action taken when a leak occurs? Is it really a good idea that whether you are prosecuted is determined not just by what you do, but who you do it against?

These questions worry me because it is quite important that the law applies to everyone if a democracy is to function. That should be obvious, but it is not.

Update: I corrected the second last paragraph (missing word).

Roughly Four Out of Ten Americans Believe Disasters Like Japanese Earthquake Directed By God

A recent poll confirms that 40 percent of Americans believe that disasters like the Japanese earthquake happen for a purpose. If we are to believe these people, God actually found it appropriate to hit Japan with an earthquake, a tsunami and ultimately also a little radiation. He sadly won't provide us with the reason why he did, but some speculate he decided to do it because of the attack on Pearl Harbour a few generations ago.

I won't even get into just how people would normally view someone who'd carry out this type of revenge. What I will suggest, however, is that this might just be evidence that education spending is sadly too low.

Could Jordan follow Egypt? Cables released by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten sheds light on US views

Could Jordan follow Egypt and Tunisisa? This question is likely asked in Washington at the moment. Protests are ongoing in the country and although the King remains popular there, there is serious unrest in the country and this unrest appears to rest on the view that political reforms are demanded, but never delivered.

According to Norwegian daily Aftenposten's recently leaked WikiLeaks cables, the US' view of King Abdullah is that he is largely withdrawn from politics and that he does not involve himself in reform efforts. In one of the cables released today (dated October 8, 2009), Ambassador R. Stephen Beecroft writes that...

Jordan´s politicians are looking intently to the King for direction, eagerly (and in some cases nervously) anticipating a royal ruling on the future of reform. They have received almost nothing. The King has been largely absent from the political scene as of late and sphinxlike in his increasingly rare public appearances. Beyond the usual business of meeting tribal leaders, greeting foreign dignitaries, and cutting ribbons, the King has said nothing to indicate his leanings on the future of the government, parliament, or reform efforts.

This view is likely to find support in Amman and other cities of Jordan. King Abdullah has called for reforms multiple times in the past, but has yet to actively deliver.

All of Aftenposten's cables related to Jordan can be read on the right side of this website.

Confidential US governmental information: Putin "cheats" in elections

I have previously looked at a few stories that highlight the trend that the US government is simply too fond of stamping information confidential. Another striking example of this emerged yesterday, and did not even concern the US the slightest bit. No, it in fact concerned Russia and the tendency that Russian governments cheat. This is hardly unknown to anyone,

The document, titled 07MOSCOW5598, concerns the 2007 Duma election in Russia. In the cable, the US Ambassador to the country argues that "three-fourths of the national television coverage and over half of the national print media coverage has gone to United Russia and Putin," and that this is caused by "Kremlin influence and media self-censorship."

Everything else the cable contains is simply references to research done by Russian polling agencies and references to comments on the situation made by other Russians. These names remain uncensored in the leaked WikiLeaks cable, which should indicate that whatever media station redacted it, did not view it as particularly threatening to that individual.

Since the information in this cable is so trivial, the only reason it was classified must have been that the US was afraid that publishing it would lead to increased difficulties in cooperating with the Russians. Looking at the wording of the cable, however, it is quite apparent that the cable hardly would be interpreted as anything serious, since the Russians unquestionably would have known that the US knew everything in the cable, and since the two countries do occasionally use strong words to describe the other.

This is not the only example of the absurd practice of stamping cables that contain what amount to reasonably trivial information.

Mike Huckabee: The Egypt protests threaten the... whole world!

Mike Huckabee recently commented on the recent Egypt protests. Here is what he had to say:

"[T]he events of the past few days in Egypt have created a very tenuous situation, not just for Egypt, not just for the Middle East, but for the entire world, and the destabilization of that nation has the potential of cascading across the globe."

It seems as if Huckabee is here arguing that the ongoing protests in Egypt is a bad idea. It is quite remarkable that Mike Huckabee seems to oppose these protest, but it is hardly remarkable since a number of other American politicians have made similar statements in the past few days.

I am a political scientist, but I cannot claim that this field is one where I hold any form of vast expertise in. That means that whenever someone makes an argument on the issue, I try very hard to understand their argument to see if they may actually have a point.

On this issue, I cannot say that I do -- for a number of reasons:

1) If a pro-democracy movement would actually spread across the world, that cannot be a bad thing at all. What does Huckabee fear? That the Chinese folks will finally stand up to their regime? That the Saudis will grow tired of their monarchy? Or that the Iranians would pick up their gloves and start protesting again? Can someone please explain to me real slowly why this is bad?

2) Even if this would spread, it seems overly dramatic to suggest that these protests could be "cascading across the globe". What does Huckabee think? That the people of France or the Canada may suddenly roam the streets to protest the leadership in their country? No, this will not even spread to Zimbabwe or Burma. It can spread to some countries across the region, but once more, is it a bad thing that people in Yemen may get to abort the corrupt regime there?

The easiest explanation for this claim is that Huckabee is afraid that a new regime may become more hostile to Israel. This is easily also true. In a poll made in 2006, 92 percent of Egyptians declared that they saw Israel as an enemy. Huckabee and other American politicians are thus worried that this would lead to greater threats to Israel. They thus prefer a dictatorship that is friendly with Israel rather than one that is democratically elected since such a regime most likely would become more opposed to Israel.

At least we know that Huckabee isn't necessarily all that positive to democratization.

Julian Assange "targets" Joe Biden and Sarah Palin

Julian Assange recently spoke to 60 minutes about the ongoing WikiLeaks-saga. In the interview, he spoke about the ongoing attempt to extradite him to the United States, and comments made about him by prominent American political figures.

Assange called the effort to extradite him to the United States “completely outrageous” and attacked both the US Vice President Joseph Biden and his contender in the last presidential election, Sarah Palin, for making what he referred to as "threats".

Biden recently called Assange a “high-tech terrorist” while Sarah Palin called for Assange to be "pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."

“There’s calls either for my assassination or the assassination of my staff or for us to be kidnapped and renditioned back to the United States to be executed,” Assange said in the interview.

Assange said he “would like to believe” that Biden, Palin and others have simply exercised their First Amendment rights by strongly condemning WikiLeaks, he does feel endangered by what’s been said about him in the public arena. “The incitements to murder are a serious issue,” he said. “And unfortunately, there is a portion of the population that will believe in them and may carry them out.”

Assange clearly has a point here. That prominent politicians are repeatedly comparing Assange with terrorists is absurd and it can only lead towards inappropriate responses. The word "terrorism" is usually associated with people who agitate violence in some form, something Assange has never done. What Assange openly does is to promote transparency. Promoting transparency through publishing leaked documents is completely legal. The right to do it is guaranteed by the American constitution and it cannot be retracted by any political decision.

It could be that Assange's strategy used to promote transparency may be poor. If so, people has the right to respectfully disagree with it. It is difficult not to recognize that Assange has a point, however. Among the documents revealed by WikiLeaks, one made the striking revelation that the US and Canada are close allies. The mere knowledge that such a cable is kept confidential should underline to people that much that should never be confidential, is in fact kept confidential.

What politicians should be concerned with is what the over-willingness to stamp documents means for people's ability to make a decision on election day. Some of the information WikiLeaks has made available is information that clearly could have affected people's willingness to vote for a given candidate. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, that had the different information that has been revealed about the Bush administration's practices not been unknown to voters during Buh's re-election campaign, he might simply have been re-elected at all. Ensuring that people have access to this information is therefore completely necessary if voters are to be able to make a judgment on who to vote for.

Twitter declares, 'The tweets must flow'

Of all the major, new social media companies, Twitter seems like the one that is the primary defender of the need for freedom of speech and freedom of communication. In a recent manifesto published on the website's blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and the company's General Counsel Alexander Macgillivray highlighted this, by calling for the need for free expression and transparency.

Social network tools have proven to be effective threats against dictators around the world. Twitter recognizes that services like Twitter only serve as "the tools that foster these discussions," but that hardly makes them less necessary in todays world. In the manifesto, Twitter argues that the "open exchange of information can have a positive global impact", something that we may have seen evidence of recently in Tunisia and Egypt.

The regime in Egypt has recently attempted to block internet traffic in Egypt now (as the image below shows). This means that accessing information is very difficult for people in the country. What a regime cannot do, however, is to block information that has already spread. Twitter's ability to partake in these developments may thus have been quite important to spread the recent protests.