Twitter may be the worst medium around for nuance, but a series of 140-character messages can at least clarify a disagreement. A couple of conversations there last night brought home some fundamental issues in the WikiLeaks affair, at least as it affects the future of journalism and free speech.

One conversation was with a journalist friend, Jason Pontin, editor of the MIT Technology Review. Like many people, he's not thrilled with all of what Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks team are doing. But when he boiled down a key issue to this -- "Is @wikileaks a media entity, and is Assange a journalist?" -- he hit the heart of a debate that is going to rage in coming weeks and months.

http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/?story=/tech/dan_gillmor/2010/12/09/journalist_licensing

The debate will arise if, as seems increasingly likely, the Obama administration charges, extradites and tries Assange for espionage, using an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917, in new and, if successful, hugely destructive ways. This notion has already been aired twice, among other places, on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, where executive power is deemed essentially limitless when it comes to anything relating to national security or crime (except most corporate wrongdoing, of course).

The impact within Spain and in Latin America has been huge. This has been especially so in Spain, because of our four-part series on the national court, looking at some high-profile cases in which the US embassy in Madrid has tried to influence judges, the government, and prosecutors in cases involving US citizens. One involved a detainee in Guantánamo, another covered secret rendition flights in Spain, and another was about the murder of a Spanish journalist by US fire in Baghdad.

The last was the most complicated because the cables revealed the double speak of government and prosecutors. Our stories showed that they told US diplomats they would try to hinder or even close down the case while telling the family of the dead journalist that they would do everything they could to advance it. This has been difficult for the Socialist government to explain.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jonathan-david-farley/julian-assange-the-man-wh_b_794706.html

There are two ways we can protect Assange. First, we can complete the mission. The Lord of Flies wishes to shut down WikiLeaks. The world now sees the sham of the neutrality of Switzerland, a country the civilized world should have invaded years ago for giving aid to druglords, dictators, and the people who make those insufferable clocks. Interpol is now illegitimate. Sweden's servility to the United States would make Tony Blair blush.

The way to prevent an epidemic is to make sure that 1 is greater than the reproductive ratio, the average number of people an infected person makes sick. Let's spread the dis-ease. Already there are 200 mirrors of the WikiLeaks site. For every site the Lord of Flies pulls down, let's put two up.

A second way to protect Assange is with the Golden "Mean": Do unto others as they would do unto you. American cowards have threatened Assange and his associates, and their families, and myself, with death. Right-wing politicians and pundits have called for the execution of the people behind WikiLeaks.

Nothing stops the Left from doing the same, except the will, which is lacking, because American liberals often want to make friends with the Enemy. For example, in Oakland, California, local police illegally spied on a black church because it was engaged at that time in anti-apartheid activities. After apartheid ended, I asked a senior pastor of the church what had happened to the guilty police. He didn't know. He hadn't followed it up.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who said, of the war criminals in his predecessor's administration, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution," now says through his attorney general that he wants to "hold people accountable"--meaning Assange.

WikiLeaks, Crowley and how the Panama embassy bribes journalists

Has Mr. Crowley been a journalist in an authoritarian country lately? Nope. But I am. I live and work in Panama, a place where journalists are routinely prosecuted, jailed and harassed for exercising the right to press freedom. Read Crowley’s own State Department country reports on Panama if you don’t believe me. Rule of law is a joke in Canal country, and I’ve been chased in cars, had gangsters show up at my house, my lawyer shot and there’s still a bunch of criminal defamation complaints against me from some Canadian and American fraud artists, Crowley’s fellow countrymen, waiting to be processed.

Do I feel threatened by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, or any of the revelations they have done over the last year? Not at all.

I do feel threatened by the State Department, though. Let’s forget about WikiLeaks for a second and see what State does here, in Panama, for journalists.

They bribe them.

Couple of years ago, a Panamanian journalist with whom I collaborated every now and then told me that she had been invited to this meeting at the US embassy down here. Present were some high-up embassy people and a number of Panamanian journalists, from news outlets varying from La Prensa, Capital Financiero to El Siglo. The proposal: They would investigate and write stories about corruption, and the embassy would make sure that investigations were funded and the results published in major news outlets, of which the “US News & World Report” was specifically mentioned. However, the whole arrangement had to remain confidential, and the involvement of the embassy was not to be revealed.

hah, the deep voices start to put their words online. ... 

I would say, if wikieaks plays this clean and smart, it will come out as the strongest internet media organization ever created, just in the nick of time. This is not all fubar yet. The push back is much bigger than they anticipated.

Contrary to the message emanating from the chattering media, WikiLeaks has embarrassed many but it has neither killed nor endangered anyone.  Washington’s relationships with most foreign nations are based on mutual interests and they will continue in spite of concerns expressed by Hillary Clinton and others.  And the positive far outweighs any potential negatives.  When WikiLeaks revealed how US helicopter crews had recklessly targeted and killed civilians in Iraq, a story originating with Manning, it was a good leak, showing just how dirty and amoral the American initiated war in Iraq had become. Likewise, its release of bundles of documents relating to the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan served a good purpose in revealing that the US government was lying about both wars and ignoring its own intelligence analysis to continue to blunder around like a blind elephant in a small room.  As the documents continue to appear they tell a tale of how the American empire is run and how, like an iceberg, most of it is concealed beneath the surface, hidden from public view.  Manning took it upon himself to release the hundreds of thousands of secret papers, reportedly because of his belief that the diplomatic documents expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and explain "how the first world exploits the third, in detail."  He was right to do so.  The American juggernaut must be stopped and the transparency provided by Manning and other whistleblowers is the best weapon to accomplish that. 

My only remaining concern continues to be the possibility that WikiLeaks itself has an agenda beyond exposing the machinations of an essentially duplicitous government.  If it does that will presumably emerge eventually, but for the present WikiLeaks is providing a necessary service. I do not know if Julian Assange is working for any intelligence service, as has been alleged in some circles.  It does seem to me that the release of documents so far has been selective, but perhaps as more of them surface that impression will vanish.  I have heard that the newly formed US cyber command aided by the Israelis is behind the hacking campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its servers, particularly ironic as President Barack Obama has several times extolled the freedom of the internet. Apparently that is only true if it is hosting criticism of Iran or China. 

The United States should not be mounting a huge international campaign to silence WikiLeaks, nor will it be successful.   Nor should it attempt to "regulate" the internet, which is the inevitable next step.  And the attempts to personally punish Assange, which might succeed, are a measure of how low America and its allies in Europe and Australia have sunk. He has broken no law even in an age of Patriot Acts and Military Commissions and the charges against him in Sweden appear to be a set-up.  Once upon a time there was a rule of law in the United States and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, but no longer.  Ultimately WikiLeaks will rise and fall based on its credibility and its ability to tell stories that are being suppressed elsewhere and that the public believes should be heard.  WikiLeaks must be allowed to speak.

A Feminist Lawyer on the Case Against Wikileaks' Julian Assange

Feminist attorney Jill Filipovic takes a closer look at the sex crime allegations against Julian Assange of wikileaks. I think the post strikes exactly the right balance between being skeptical about the merits and motives of the case against Assange and acknowledging that he's accused of some relatively serious sexual misconduct. In other words, the case against Assange may be baseless, but that doesn't mean the very allegations against him are trivial or nonsensical.

It's obvious that the legal response to these charges has been blown way out of proportion for political reasons. Assange is the target of an international manhunt. Jill notes that one of the crimes he's accused of carries the equivalent of a $700 fine. Yet, Assange has somehow rocketed to a spot on Interpol's most wanted list, no doubt displacing mass-raping war criminals, sex traffickers, and other global predators.

So, what exactly is Assange accused of doing? Sweden prohibits prosecutors from releasing any details about sexual assault allegations, so it's impossible to know for sure. Jill's best guess, based on admittedly murky media reports, is that Assange is accused of violating two (otherwise consenting) sex partners by flouting their wishes with regard to condoms.

Again, these are guesses, but plausible guesses in my opinion: One accuser says she agreed to sex on the condition that Assange wear a condom, only to discover that he'd penetrated her without one. The other accuser maintains that Assange refused to stop having sex after a condom broke.

If consent is predicated on condom use and one partner surreptitiously avoids using a condom, morally, that's a form of sexual assault. Jill notes in her piece that it would be difficult to make that legal case in many U.S. states because the relevant laws require force or threat or force in addition to non-consent. However, the second allegation, if proven, would easily constitute rape in many U.S. states. If one person withdraws consent during sex by telling their partner to stop, and their partner doesn't stop, that's rape (non-consent + force).

Assange has been accused of rape in the English-language media, but it sounds like he's actually been charged with some considerably lesser offenses under Swedish law.

Wikileaks Has Committed No Crime

The most commonly cited statute by those who advocate prosecuting Wikileaks is Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act. In August, former Bush speechwriter Marc Theissen linked to this section in an article for the Washington Post when he wrote that Wikileaks is “a criminal enterprise” whose founder, Julian Assange, should be arrested by U.S. forces on foreign soil, international law be damned.

But this provision does not apply to those who publish information.

Section 793(e)reads “Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document…relating to the national defense…willfully communicates… the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it…[s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”

As made clear in the Pentagon Papers case, the word “communicates” was never meant “to encompass publication” or to affect the press. Congress included the word “publish” in three other sections of the Act but intentionally left it out of 793. As the legislative history of this provision states, “Nothing in this Act shall…in any way to limit or infringe upon freedom of the press or of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.”

http://www.lasisblog.com/2010/11/12/wikileaks-has-committed-no-crime/

Other commentators have cited Section 798 of the Espionage Act, a provision that has previously alarmed journalists because it has no intent requirement like Sections 793 and 794. In other words, someone can be prosecuted under this act, no matter the motivations behind publication or the audience it was intended for. But these commentators do not seem to have analyzed the law beyond that point. If they did, they would realize, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald points out, Section 798 covers “only very narrow categories of information (i.e., cryptography, signals communication intelligence, or interception of foreign governments’ communications) which plainly do not encompass the leak of the Afghan [or now Iraq] war documents.”

No media outlet has ever been charged under Sections 793, 794 or 798. The Bush Administration—not exactly a friend to the press—considered prosecuting the New York Times under Section 798 for its story on the NSA’s most likely illegal warrantless wiretapping program, which fits more squarely under the definition of communication intelligence. Yet even then, the Justice Department declined to do so.

Pfizer

Pfizer maintains the children documented in the suit died from meningitis, not the drug trial, and describes its trial largely as a humanitarian effort aimed at saving lives during a 1996 epidemic–an ugly trifecta of meningitis, cholera and measles–that killed 12,000 Nigerians, many of them children.

Before Pfizer’s 1996 trial, oral Trovan had never been tested for efficacy in children, in part because of concerns over side effects. Trovan belongs to a powerful class of antibiotics called quinolones, which can have serious side effects, including liver problems and cartilage and tendon abnormalities. In early-stage testing, quinolones had caused liver and joint damage in young rats and dogs–making testing in children more problematic. Although Pfizer insists that scientific articles supported the testing and use of quinolones in children as medically indicated and ethically justified.

Pfizer enrolled 200 children, between 3 months and 18 years old, in its Trovan trial. Of those, half received a full dose of Trovan. The control group was given Rocephin, a Hoffman-La Roche drug considered the “gold standard” for meningitis treatment, albeit less than the then-approved dose.

A month after the trial, five children in the Trovan group and six in the Rocephin group had died. Dozens of others were left paralyzed or with crippling arthritis. Pfizer says the deaths and injuries are tragic. Nevertheless, it maintains the study proved its drug’s efficacy, given that the epidemic killed 10% of all those infected.

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But Pfizer never had the opportunity to apply for pediatric use. After approving Trovan for 14 other uses in 1997, the FDA advised the company to pull the drug entirely– two years and over 2.5 million prescriptions later– citing reports of liver damage.

2010-12-09: Sweden case updates

Jennifer Robinson, one of Julian Assange's lawyers, was interviewed yesterday on Democracy Now!. Regarding the charges, she clarified that "the first thing to note is that no formal charges have yet been brought" and that the warrant is "in relation to the allegations, not formal charges, and is for the purposes of having him give his interview and answers to the questions of the prosecutor."

She reiterated that Julian Assange had cooperated with the investigation throughout, and that there was absolutely no need for an arrest warrant to be issued for an interview. He had remained in Sweden for more than a month and a half to answer the allegations and police questions, and he left the country with the prosecutor's permission. She added: "Since leaving the country, he has been in touch with her. And indeed, the judge noted yesterday that I had written to the police to notify them here in Britain that we were aware that an arrest warrant may be communicated and that we were willing to cooperate. The judge noted that this was a very positive sign. Julian has, at all stages, cooperated. We have volunteered cooperation to the prosecutor."

Julian Assange and his legal team have not been presented yet with any of the evidence of the allegations against him, she noted, despite the fact that this contravenes the European Convention. "The first document we have received in English, which is her obligation under that convention, with respect to Mr. Assange, was Monday, when we received the arrest warrant, and there was a very short notation of the offenses and the basic facts underlying those offenses. So, as to any earlier correspondence between the complainants and Julian and their motivation for going to the police, we only know what we’ve been able to read in the press, which is a highly unsatisfactory position to be in."

http://wlcentral.org/node/570

Breaking: Julian Assange Expecting to be Charged with Spying by the US

"The Fourth Estate is dead," Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "The Fourth Estate in his country has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus. Captive! So, there is no Fourth Estate."

McGovern explained that the term the "Fourth Estate," known today as the news media in the US, was first coined by 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. Burke is said to have pointed to the balcony in Parliament and lauded the print media of his day for being the safeguards of democracy.