This week's news on Wikileaks.
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Never forget that Bradley Manning, and not gay marriage, is the issue
17 MayNew Statesman
Barack Obama’s sudden “conversion” to the cause of same-sex marriage barely disguises the prime motives of a president as reactionary and violent as George W Bush.In the week Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he ordered bombing attacks on Yemen, killing a reported 63 people, 28 of them children. When recently Obama announced that he supported same-sex marriage, Nato planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits. In both cases, the mass murder was barely news. What mattered were the cynical vacuities of a political celebrity, the product of a zeitgeist driven by the forces of consumerism and the media, with the aim of diverting the struggle for social and economic justice.
The award of the Nobel Prize to the first black American president because he “offered hope” was both absurd and an authentic expression of the lifestyle liberalism that controls much political debate in the west. Same-sex marriage is one such distraction. No “issue” diverts attention as successfully as this: not the free vote in parliament on lowering the age of gay consent promoted by that noted libertarian and war criminal, Tony Blair; not the cracks in “glass ceilings” that contribute nothing to women’s liberation and merely amplify the demands of bourgeois privilege.
Groupie surge
Legal obstacles should not prevent people from marrying each other, regardless of gender. However, this is a civil and private matter; bourgeois acceptability is not yet a human right. The rights historically associated with marriage are those of property – capitalism itself. Elevating the “right” to marriage above the right to life and justice is as profane as seeking allies among those who deny life and justice to so many, from Afghanistan to Palestine.
On 9 May, hours before his Damascene declaration on same-sex marriage, Obama sent out messages to potential donors making his new position clear. He asked for money. In response, according to the Washington Post, his campaign received a “massive surge of contributions”. The following evening, with the news now dominated by his “conversion”, he attended a fundraising party at the Los Angeles home of the actor George Clooney.
“Hollywood,” reported the Associated Press, “is home to some of the most high-profile backers of gay marriage, and the 150 donors who are paying $40,000 to attend Clooney’s dinner will no doubt feel invigorated by Obama’s watershed announcement the day before.” The Clooney party is expected to raise a record $15m for Obama’s re-election. It was followed by “yet another fundraiser Monday in New York sponsored by gay and Latino Obama supporters”.
On economic and foreign policies, the width of a cigarette paper separates the Democratic Party from the Republicans. Both represent the super-rich and the impoverishment of a nation from which trillions of tax dollars have been transferred to a permanent war industry and banks that are little more than criminal enterprises. Obama is as reactionary and violent as George W Bush, and in some ways he is worse. His speciality is the use of drones armed with Hellfire missiles against defenceless people.
Under cover of a partial withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, he has sent US special forces to 120 countries where death squads are trained. He has revived the old cold war on two fronts: against China in Asia and with a “shield” of missiles aimed at Russia. The first black American president has presided over the incarceration and surveillance of greater numbers of black people than were enslaved in 1850. He has prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any of his predecessors. His vice-president, Joe Biden, a zealous warmonger, has called the WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange a “hi-tech terrorist”. Biden has also converted to the cause of gay marriage.
One of America’s true heroes is the gay soldier Bradley Manning, the whistleblower alleged to have provided WikiLeaks with the epic evidence of US carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the Obama administration that smeared his homosexuality as weird, and it was Obama who declared a man convicted of no crime to be guilty.
Who among the fawners and the luvvies at Clooney’s Hollywood moneyfest shouted, “Remember Bradley Manning”? To my knowledge, no prominent spokesperson for gay rights has spoken out against Obama’s and Biden’s hypocrisy in claiming to support same-sex marriage while terrorising a gay man whose courage should be an inspiration to all, regardless of sexual preference.
Classy service
Obama’s historic achievement as president of the United States has been to silence the anti-war and social justice movement associated with the Democratic Party. Such deference to an extremism disguised by and embodied in a clever, amoral operator betrays the rich tradition of popular protest in the US. Perhaps the Occupy movement is in this tradition; perhaps not.
The truth is that what matters to those who aspire to control our lives is not skin pigment, or gender, or whether or not we are gay, but the class we serve. The goals are to ensure that we look inward on ourselves, not outward to others, that we never comprehend the sheer scale of undemocratic power, and that we collaborate in isolating those who resist. This attrition of criminalising, brutalising and banning protest can easily turn western democracies into states of fear.
On 12 May, in Sydney, Australia, home of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, a protest parade in support of gay marriage filled the city centre. The police looked on benignly. It was a showcase of liberalism. Three days later, there was to be a march to commemorate al-Naqba (“the Catastrophe”), the day of mourning marking Israel’s expulsion of the Palestinians from their land. A police ban had to be overturned by the Supreme Court.
That is why the people of Greece ought to be our inspiration. By their own painful experience, they know that their freedom can only be regained by standing up to the German central bank, the International Monetary Fund and their own quislings in Athens. People across Latin America have achieved this: the indignados of Bolivia, who saw off the water privateers, and the Argentinians, who told the IMF what to do with their debt. The courage of disobedience was their weapon. Remember Bradley Manning.
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WikiLeaks: No, Media "Morons," We Didn't Help Iran Execute An Israeli Spy
17 MayForbes.com - News
Since WikiLeaks first released its flood of classified State Department memos in December of 2010, the secret-spilling site?s critics have been searching for evidence that ?s disregard for official secrecy would directly hurt some innocent bystander. On Wednesday, those critics seemed to have found their best evidence yet of that harm. Nevermind that the facts ... -
Macedonia on trial for human rights abuses in US post-9/11 rendition case
16 MayThe Guardian World News
European court of human rights hears case of Khaled el-Masri, detained in Skopje before alleged torture in Afghanistan by CIA
Europe's human rights court began hearing the first case arising from the US's post-9/11 rendition programme on Wednesday, when the government of Macedonia went on trial accused of multiple human rights abuses of a German citizen.
Khaled el-Masri, 48, a car salesman of Lebanese descent, was detained in Macedonia in December 2003 and held for more than three weeks in Skopje, before being handed to CIA officers who flew him to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly tortured for the next five months.
The CIA appears to have realised it had made a mistake: it had been looking for another man of the same name. El-Masri was then flown from Afghanistan to Albania and abandoned by the side of a road in a mountainous area, with no means of returning home.
The grand chamber of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg began hearing a case brought by el-Masri's lawyers which alleges a breach of his European Convention rights to liberty and freedom from torture.
Several other European states are expected to face proceedings before the European court as more details emerge of complicity in acts committed during the US's post-9/11 counter-terrorism operations.
The Macedonian government has insisted that while its police did detain el-Masri, he was later permitted to leave the country for Kosovo. That claim is expected to be contradicted at court by a statement from a former Macedonian government minister.
Moreover, the allegations that el-Masri makes have largely been confirmed by both the German government and, privately, the US government. In December 2005, while standing alongside then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, German chancellor Angela Merkel told a press conference that "the American administration is not denying" it was responsible for el-Masri's abduction, and accepted that it had detained the wrong man. "I'm happy to say we have discussed the one case, which the government of the United States has of course accepted as a mistake," Merkel said. "I'm very happy that the foreign minister has repeated here that when such mistakes happen, they must be corrected immediately. Everything else must happen in accordance with the law." Rice declined to comment on the case, and aides later said that she had said only that any mistakes would be corrected.
Inquiries by the Council of Europe and the German Bundestag have also largely corroborated el-Masri's account. In December 2010, US diplomatic cables posted on the internet by WikiLeaks showed that American diplomats persuaded Germany not to seek the extradition of several US officials allegedly involved in el-Masri's rendition, following an investigation by the Bavarian state prosecutor's office.
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative – the NGO that is presenting el-Masri's case, said: "It is time for both the US and Macedonia to acknowledge the facts of this appalling case and to provide appropriate redress."
El-Masri, from Ulm, Bavaria, has never received an apology, acknowledgment of compensation from the CIA or the US government. He brought civil proceedings in the US against the former head of the CIA, George Tenet. After that case was thrown out when the US government claimed state secrets privilege, he also brought proceedings through the Inter-American commission on human rights.
Proceedings are being brought against Lithuania and Poland in the European court of human rights, and human rights lawyers believe recent revelations about the UK's role in the rendition of Libyan dissidents and their families of Tripoli in 2004 will result in the British government being brought before the court. Those operations are also the subject of a Scotland Yard criminal investigation, while Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time, is being sued by the victims in the UK courts.
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WikiLeak perhaps led to Iran's 'Mossad' hanging
16 MayJerusalem Post
'Times of London' finds similarities between accused spy and WikiLeaks description of Iranian intelligence source. -
WikiLeaks cable may have led to hanging
16 MayThe Australian
AN Iranian who was hanged yesterday for allegedly murdering a nuclear scientist might have died because of a confidential cable published by WikiLeaks. -
The tragic consequences of Mexico's failure to tackle organised crime | Luis Hernández Navarro
15 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
As the body count piles up in Mexico's drug wars, the government hasn't addressed the appalling level of violence
Mexico has become a paradise for the nota rosa, or red press, those sections of our media that focus on sensational crime and violence. Since 2006 the violence has reached unheard-of levels and crosses all social boundaries. Drug traffickers, the police, military chiefs, politics and business have become intertwined in a spectacular way.
The latest bloody event is the appearance of 49 bodies without hands, feet or heads on the road near Cadereyta, a town very close to Monterrey, the capital city of the prosperous northern state of Nuevo León. Beside the bodies there was a banner apparently claiming responsibility for the murders on behalf of the notorious Los Zetas cartel. The number of executions in Nuevo León so far this year is 666, more than the 611 murders committed by organised crime in the past year.
It is the third such massacre in the country in the last 10 days, and the fifth in 10 months. Earlier in May 23 bodies were found – some lying and others hanging from a bridge - in the neighbouring state of Tamaulipas. Last week, 18 bodies were thrown on to a road in Jalisco. In September 2011, 18 corpses appeared in the state of Veracruz, and in November 26 murder victims were found in two abandoned trucks in Guadalajara.
Los Zetas is a group of drug traffickers who until 2010 worked for the powerful Gulf cartel. It was formed by military men from the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), an elite corps of the Mexican army, trained by the CIA. It is in conflict with the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán and El Mayo Zambada over drug-trafficking routes and markets in Mexico and smuggling to the US. Several analysts consider it the most violent criminal gang in Mexico.
The massacre of 49 people in Cadereyta is part of the struggle between cartels for the strategic city of Monterrey, the economic powerhouse of northern Mexico and home to a dynasty of powerful and usually conservative businessmen. The city gives shelter to the drug barons and provides them with logistical support and income from extortion. They have become prominent members of the community.
The drug cartels conquered Monterrey and turned it into their sanctuary. Many of the bosses live in the richest residential areas of the city. Their sons attend the best private universities and move among the local elites. Casinos, spas and brothels flourish under their auspices.
But after 2006 violence erupted in the state. In 2009 the local station, Televisa was attacked with rifles. In August 2011 more than 50 people, most of them women, died when a casino was set on fire. Violent blockades of main avenues by armed groups are also frequent. The cartels have even mobilised the city's poor in their favour.
Diplomatic cables coming out of the US Consulate in Monterrey, written between 2006 and 2007 and revealed by WikiLeaks, alerted the world to the fact that the city had become a narco war zone. At the end of 2009 Bruce Williamson, then US consul in the city, said in a report to the Department of State that Nuevo León was "Zeta territory" and that the fight against drug traffickers was producing no results in that part of the country. Three years on, that estimation has proved tragically right.
The slaughter in Cadereyta is the latest tragic testimony of the failure of the war on organised crime launched by President Felipe Calderón. The nation is now more insecure than when he assumed office in 2006.
The story of the Calderón administration is being told in the crime pages of the papers, not in the articles and speeches of its officials. His term will pass into history as one that saw human rights violations, public insecurity, the military on the streets, more than 60,000 dead and 10,000 disappeared.
• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree
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"Patriotic hacktivist" The Jester unmasked—or maybe it's a big troll
15 MayArs Technica
The alleged DM exchange threatening The Jester with exposure.The vigilante hacker who made a name for himself harassing Anonymous, disrupting WikiLeaks, and stalking “jihadist” sites is apparently laying low after threats to expose his real identity were made via Twitter on May 11. The person claiming to have details of The Jester’s identity plans to publish that information—after he passes the hat for Bitcoins first, allegedly in part to raise funds for WikiLeaks.
On May 14, The Jester's Twitter account was deleted. Later that day, another one sprung up with posts claiming to be The Jester—and announcing DDoS attacks on some of his favorite targets.
It’s not clear if any of this is legitimate—whether it involves someone who has dirt on The Jester, someone who managed to hack The Jester’s Twitter account, or whether it is yet another master troll by The Jester himself (or by one of the many people who would like him to go hide for a while.)
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WikiLeaks wars: Digital conflict spills into real life
14 MayNew Scientist - Weapons Technology
A leaderless army of activists is wreaking havoc on the internet. Is this a sign of cyberwars to come?
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What is left unsaid is often more powerful and poetic | Biljana Scott
12 Maywww.guardian.co.uk - science
Implicit communication is vital to diplomacy – as we can keep our options open while not causing offence
Why use implicit communication? Wouldn't life be so much simpler if people just said what they meant? Perhaps, but it would also be much poorer, for it would lack the power of poetry and possibility. Although most self-help books on public speaking and effective communication focus on clarity, everyday language draws extensively on the more covert art of the unsaid: suggestion, insinuation, connotation and other forms of implicit communication. The very abundance of terms with which we differentiate nuances of what hasn't quite been said suggests that this is an area of experience that matters to us.
So why does it matter? One reason is that by not committing to a position or proposition overtly, we can keep our options open for longer. A definition of so-called "diplomatic language" is language that sits on the fence. Equivocation doesn't only provide us with room for manoeuvre, but also allows for plausible deniability: one can't be held accountable for what one hasn't said. Although fudging serves the speaker well, it may frustrate those parties who require decision and commitment.
Another reason for preferring implicit communication has to do with face: because in-your-face remarks tend to cause offence, politeness often involves the use of indirect language. Loss of face can all too readily lead to retaliation and the escalation of conflict. The damage caused by WikiLeaks was not so much in the content of the cables, but in the fact that this content was broadcast: by projecting private communications into the public domain, the judgments they contain are "out there" and can't be taken back (See Steven Pinker's analysis of the film When Harry met Sally in his lecture Language as a Window into Human Nature. In its second sense of "politeness" and "consideration" therefore, diplomatic language serves the interests of the other party by not causing offence, while also serving our own interests by sparing us the consequences of offence caused.
A third and vitally important reason for resorting to implicit communication concerns persuasion: we are much more likely to win someone over if we lead them to the conclusions we want them to reach than if we tell them what to think or do. One way of achieving this is through the use of connotations, which pack a whole story into a capsule. Consider the terms "security fence" and "apartheid wall": both refer to the same edifice between Israel and Palestine, but each tells a very different story.
Metaphors and analogies similarly pack a story in a capsule, as illustrated by the "roadmap" to peace, "war" on terror, or another "Vietnam". Metaphors frame an argument by transferring our understanding of one thing on to a different area of experience. Their appeal is in offering an accessible way of thinking about something we might otherwise find hard to grasp, but they do so by telling only part of the story and leaving the rest to be inferred. In filling out the unsaid along the lines intended by the metaphor-maker, we are in effect complicit in our own manipulation. Diplomacy, it has been said, is "the art of letting the other party have things your way".
Is the use of implicit communication primarily self-serving then? Not all social dynamics are necessarily self-interested, or if they are, the "self" may involve a larger group. This is the case where what is not said need not be said, because it is understood. When we "speak the same language", we understand one another without having to spell out our meaning, as is typified by humour, irony, shared allusions and other forms of coded communication. Here, the unsaid serves to create and consolidate a sense of community.
Finally, the unsaid is packed with the power of possibility. Poetry and politics share common ground when it comes to potential, promise and redress, as suggested by the adage: "We campaign in poetry, but govern in prose." In so far as explicit communication is the tip of the iceberg, implication is its submerged under-structure: unsaid, often unseen, potentially lethal yet at times unutterably beautiful.
From equivocation to consideration, from persuasion to in-group consolidation, from threat to thrall, implicit communication plays an important role not only in diplomacy, but in everyday communication. We have a choice either to master the unsaid or to be mastered by it.
• Biljana Scott will be speaking at Brighton Festival on Sunday 13 May at 4pm in an event called The Unsaid: Diplomatic Incidents
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Underwear bomb plot: British and US intelligence rattled over leaks
11 MayThe Guardian World News
Leak about UK involvement described as despicable by CIA as anger turns to Obama administration for compromising mission
Detailed leaks of operational information about the foiled underwear bomb plot are causing growing anger in the US intelligence community, with former agents blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British services, MI6 and MI5.
The Guardian has learned from Saudi sources that the agent was not a Saudi national as was widely reported, but a Yemeni. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in the port city of Jeddah, and then studied and worked in the UK, where he acquired a British passport.
Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. "MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president, if he has the balls. This is really tragic," Scheur said.
He added: "Any information disclosed is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing."
He noted that the leak came on the heels of a series of disclosures over the last 10 days, beginning with a report that the CIA wanted to expand its drone attacks in Yemen, Barack Obama making a surprise trip to Afghanistan around the time of the Bin Laden anniversary and "then this inexplicable leak".
Robert Grenier, former head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, in an article for al-Jazeera, said the spies of the US intelligence community "rather than quietly celebrating success are wistfully shaking their heads … As the director of national intelligence launches an investigation, he does so knowing that the real culprits – in the White House and on Capitol Hill – are beyond his reach."
The name of the British passport-holder has not yet been released but may come out through al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He is reported to have spent time at at language school in Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, and been recruited by al-Qaida as a suicide bomber.
Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai told CNN that the bomber had been recruited by the Saudis to penetrate al-Qaida about a year ago, in part because the group would be attracted by the fact that his UK passport meant he could travel to the US without a visa.
"Apparently he was able to convince al-Qaida that he is genuinely ready to carry out the mission," said Alani, who CNN said had been briefed by Saudi counter-terrorism officials. Alani said his understanding was that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) intended the would-be suicide bomber to fly through a Gulf country to connect to a US-bound flight.
The Saudi operation culminated with the agent and another Saudi informant – likely his handler – being whisked out of Yemen, Alani said. "My information is that he was pulled out after the device was handed to him, and they ordered the green light to carry out the operation," he told the US network.
Yemen has been a key target country for the CIA and MI6 in line with the growing strength of Aqap in recent years. But the lead on the ground has been taken by the Saudi intelligence service, the Mabahith, which is best placed to operate in the local environment and exploit links on either side of the border.
Both the US and British intelligence communities are known to work closely with their Saudi counterparts and both have liaison officers permanently stationed in Riyadh and Sana'a.
Aqap moved its operations to Yemen in 2007 after the defeat of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. The Nigerian "underwear bomber", Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009, was radicalised in Yemen while claiming to be there as a student.
The US, Britain and the Saudis are likely to have preferred their own intelligence operation to co-operation with the Yemeni security authorities, who are anxious to avoid being seen as a western pawn.
Cables released by WikiLeaks exposed the scale of US covert involvement in the Arab world's poorest country. In 2009 the Saudi deputy interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, told General James Jones, President Obama's national security adviser: "The Saudis have been monitoring conversations of al-Qaida operatives in Yemen very closely and whereas before the [recent] attack they were hearing relaxed 20-minute phone conversations over cellphones, after the attack the phones went virtually silent. This suggests that at least for now these operatives are more focused on their own security rather than on planning operations."
Bin Nayef's support for operations against Aqap is unsurprising. He survived an assassination attempt in Jeddah in September 2009 when a Saudi Aqap operative named Abdullah al-Asiri feigned repentance for his jihadi views in a meeting with the prince then blew himself up with a bomb concealed in his anus. Al-Asiri's brother Ibrahim is Aqap's chief bombmaker.
Gregory Johnsen, a US expert on Aqap, pondered on his blog whether the group would now reveal the identity of the undercover agent. "Undoubtedly, Aqap recorded a marytrdom video of the undercover agent before giving him the bomb," Johnsen wrote. "The US and Saudis won't divulge his identity for obvious reasons, but will Aqap?"
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