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.

Is WikiLeaks.ch blocked in the US?

WikiLeaks.ch appears to have been blocked in the US. This could of course be caused by some temporary error, but if it is not, it is a pretty big attack on freedoms of expression and freedoms of the press. The first amendment dictates that press organizations have the right to publish and WikiLeaks should by all likelihood be considered a media organization. The US government therefore violates the constitution if it is in some form involved in the blocking of Wikileaks.ch. This is serious business.

This follows from the prior closing of the domain WikiLeaks.org, which seems to have also been ordered by the American government. This information is of course speculative at best and may be wrong, but the reality is that the website loads in Europe, but not in the US.

Update: WikiLeaks.ch seems to be working in the US again.

The White House: It's unfortunate that news organizations determine what WikiLeak stories they should run

I've previously written about the recent trend that newspapers in the United States are asking the White House for advice on what stories they should avoid from the recent WikiLeaks cables. It appears that politicians move newspapers towards this position by maintaining the claim that the leaks are damaging to the United States and that it could put lives in danger.

Both the media and the White House have been relatively open about this tendency, probably because it could become an issue in itself if people starting asking why The Guardian is running stories New York Times isn't running. On a recent press conference, however, Philip J. Crowley (Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs), may have said a little more than he was supposed to when answering a question about the recent leaks. Crowley said:

"Unfortunately, it’s the news organizations that determine the redactions. We have made a range of requests." (Full transcript)

So the official position of the government is that it is "unfortunate" that the press is allowed to edit itself? That's quite remarkable considering the fact that the first amendment is very old! It is even more remarkable, however, that no one seem to raise any questions about it. The reason, it seems, is simply that the media has already given up their job of asking questions and instead embrace the government's position halfway, while performing their media duties halfway. And when the media isn't raising questions, people are not either.

A number of questions should be asked now:

If the information leaked by WikiLeaks can put people in danger, what good does it do that Americans don't know about that information? Is the American government afraid that Americans could be the ones that would put people in danger or why else is it so dangerous that Americans don't get to hear whatever it is that is being "redacted"? Does the American government think that foreigners read NY Times and watch CNN and have no other news sources? Why does this self-imposed form of censorship really help so much when the Guardian covers these leaks much better than any Americans news organizations? Wouldn't foreigners who might have an interest in hurting someone perhaps avoid New York Times as a primary source of their news?

I have a feeling that the answer is already out there. I've previously written about the American intervention in the Spanish law system to protect Bush officials. That involvement seems to have not been covered much in the US. MSNBC did a small segment on it and Fox Latino covered it briefly too. Other than that it has not been mentioned. The Guardian, meanwhile, has written at least five full stories on this case.

This story could only harm a few people: Alberto Gonzales and Barack Obama are two. It would be dangerous to the last one of them too, since it could affect his chances in the next election. Other than that, it simply isn't very dangerous.

But it was fortunate that the newspapers didn't run it.

Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe

A highly interesting story in Mother Jones basically follows up the tendency that Wikileaks is supplying information that voters should have to be able to make a true choice when they vote. The story details how the Obama administration has protected the Bush administration officials against criminal investigation in Spain by putting pressure on Spanish officials. Obama has hardly been given any credit for doing this, but it has not exactly been widely known either. The first paragraph in the story reads:

"In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution."

The fact that the administration decided to hide this from the news makes this story merely another example of information that is hidden simply because it would be uncomfortable for certain people if it was to be revealed. There is no security issue involved. It would certainly be difficult to uphold the deal if it wasn't hidden from the media and the real test is whether it can be upheld now that it has been revealed.

On a different note, it is noteworthy that major American newspapers or news broadcaster appear to not publish or run this story. This could be an example of some form of self-censorship on the basis of White House objections to the leaks, an issue I wrote about here.

Read the full story in Mother Jones here.

NY Times let the White House partake in editing... A democratic problem?

With the latest round of the Wikileaks cables, the New York Times followed suit with prior practices, and has let the White House in on what it was going to publish. According to the newspaper, the White House suggested redactions and the Times "agreed to some, but not all" of the government's suggestions. The newspaper agreed, furthermore, to forward "the administration’s concerns to other news organizations and, at the suggestion of the State Department, to WikiLeaks itself".

The Times' willingness to open up to the White House follows a worrying prior tendency that the newspaper is willing to sacrifice its editorial rights and support the governmental position. The Times' coverage of the early stage of the Iraq war was, for example, also found to be biased in favor of the government. Worse yet is the fact that the newspaper in 2008 ran a story on how government officials met with media reporters to try to influence their coverage on that war. If the Times found this story newsworthy in 2008, it's strange that they are willing to get into something quite similar now.

Update: It has become increasingly clear that these NY Times redactions are in fact posted on the WikiLeaks website too. This must mean that WikiLeaks must actually tolerate the practice. It could also be added that the NY Times may have had legitimate reasons to do what they did. Involving governmental officials could be legitimate, as long as the protection of individuals is a central issue.