Obama and Wikileaks

It was more or less confirmed on Saturday that a secret grand jury has been assembled in America to consider espionage charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange. Last month a subpoena was issued to Twitter by a court in the state of Virginia, under section 2703(d) of the Patriot Act, demanding the website hand over account details of individuals associated with the organisation. The court, it appears, is attempting to establish evidence that Assange colluded with the young man allegedly responsible for leaking thousands of classified U.S. government files, Bradley Manning.

The U.S. could not successfully prosecute Assange merely as the publisher of the documents (though some members of congress want to amend legislation so they can do so in the future). But if they can prove Assange – or others involved with Wikileaks – conspired with Manning to obtain and release them, then lawyers believe the prosecution could have a case.

The most striking thing about the U.S. attempt to prosecute Assange is the intense fervor with which the Obama administration is scheming to bring him down. They are exerting a serious, time consuming, money draining campaign to castigate him – and some of his colleagues – by any possible means. Only three years ago Obama was elected under the banner of ‘change’. Yet here he is, mobilising George W. Bush’s Patriot Act in an attempt to imprison a man who is merely practicing principles Obama has himself repeatedly preached.

At a speech delivered in September of last year, for instance, Obama puffed out his chest and said with great conviction:

The arc of human progress has been shaped by individuals with the freedom to assemble; by organizations outside of government that insisted upon democratic change; and by free media that held the powerful accountable.

[...] experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty – that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply: democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens.

[...] Open society supports open government, but cannot substitute for it. There is no right more fundamental than the ability to choose your leaders and determine your destiny. Make no mistake: the ultimate success of democracy in the world won’t come because the United States dictates it; it will come because individual citizens demand a say in how they are governed.

The speech was a good one, full of fist-pumping, high-minded talk about the ‘free internet’, ‘open government’, 'liberty' and ‘democracy’. As it reached its conclusion, Obama gained a rapturous applause. Yet again he had illustrated his wonderful and emotive oratory skills.

But when the emotion of the moment subsided, when calm resumed, his words remained mere words. The uncomfortable truth is that three years since his election as the saviour of America, in many ways Obama has only talked the talk – he has not walked the walk.

If the president claims to be a true advocate of open government, liberty and democracy, then serious questions must be asked of his integrity. 23-year-old Bradley Manning has been in solitary confinement in a Virginia prison for five months without so much as a preliminary hearing, a secret grand jury appears to be meticulously gathering evidence in an attempt to prosecute Julian Assange . . . while it has now come to the stage that American journalists are hesitant to support Wikileaks for fear of a government reprimand. All of this has taken place on Obama’s watch. Certainly a strange picture of ‘liberty’.

With his Wikileaks response, Obama has proven himself – although not as the redeemer of the American Dream, or as a great proponent of ‘change’. Instead he has proven that power has eroded his values, and that he has allowed himself to become a victim of an American political system that appears to be both diseased and contagious. As Commander and Chief it may be unrealistic to expect Obama to have embraced the actions of Wikileaks with open arms; however, this does not mean the only option for him was to bring down the iron fist.

If only, somehow, Obama could be made to live up to all his grand rhetoric – rhetoric that made people around the world believe he really was different. Like on January 20th 2009, at the rousing conclusion of his inauguration speech in Washington, when he took a moment to look out towards the future. “Let it be said by our children's children,” he said, “that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter”.

Now almost two years to the day since that historic speech, Obama has both turned back and faltered. At this particular juncture, history will remember him as the man who had ideals – but then let them slip. Perhaps we are naive to have expected anything else . . . As the Obama administration’s handling of the Wikileaks saga has in recent months illustrated, ‘change we can believe in’ was just a slogan, after all.

This article appeared originally at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/secret-grand-jury-against-assange-is-not-change-we-can-believe-in

Cablegate: Part II

It has now been two weeks since the beginning of Cablegate – the largest leak of classified intelligence in history. In recent days we have seen the organisation responsible, Wikileaks, endure repeated attacks from across the political spectrum. Crude suppression tactics have been mobilised by powerful American politicians in a desperate attempt to remove Wikileaks from the internet; Paypal, Visa, Mastercard and Amazon have all now severed their ties with the organisation after pressure from the US Homeland Security Committee.

On Tuesday, after much speculation, the police finally crossed paths with Wikileaks’ co-founder, Julian Assange. He was arrested in London and jailed – incidentally in the same prison once occupied by Oscar Wilde – pending an extradition trial in relation to sexual offence allegations made against him in Sweden. “Many people believe that this prosecution is politically motivated,” said his lawyer on the steps of Westminster Magistrates Court. “I am sure that justice will out and Mr Assange will be released and vindicated in due course.”

Yet amazingly, as Cablegate enters its third week, we must remember that this flurry of historic high-drama has been caused by the release into the public domain of just 1,344 of 251,287 – approximately 0.5% – of the confidential embassy cables. The worst, it seems fair to say, is yet to come.

It is going to be a long and arduous process. There will be months of scandals, colourful revelations and allegations of every kind imaginable. Concentration and stamina will be required, for there is a strong likelihood that some massive stories could slip under the radar, lost in an information abyss. Only 14 days in, the sheer deluge of cables already appears to be causing the onset of apathy and laziness, particularly among sections of the press.

Earlier this week, for instance, we learned from the cables that on 24 September 2009 Whitehall told America to ignore then Prime Minister Gordon Brown's statement on the UK’s nuclear deterrent, Trident. Brown had planned to scale back Trident, and on 23 September 2009 said in a speech to the UN General Assembly: “If we are serious about the ambition of a nuclear free world we will need statesmanship, not brinkmanship.” This announcement, one of the cables reveals, “caught many in HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] by surprise.” The Americans were subsequently reassured by high-ranking foreign office policy officials, seemingly behind Brown’s back, that there would be “no daylight” between US and UK nuclear policy. “HMG has not formally decided to scale back the deterrent but would only do so if a government defense [sic] review determines,” the officials stressed.

However the Trident revelations, publicised by the Guardian, were not widely covered by the British media – who were instead focused intently on the arrest of Julian Assange and the lurid content of the allegations made against him. Similarly, during the first few days of Cablegate, several newspapers – particularly the tabloids – devoted more coverage to diplomatic name-calling than to the major revelations that British officials not only promised to protect US interests during the Iraq inquiry, but also made a deal with the US to allow the country to keep cluster bombs in the UK despite the ban on the munitions signed by Gordon Brown.

This week we also learned that prior to the general election in March, Conservative party politicians promised behind the scenes to run a “pro-American regime” and made assurances that, if voted into power, they would buy more arms from the US. While the cables have further revealed – as many suspected – that prior to the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the UK was under intense pressure from the Libyan government. One cable, dated 24 October 2008, reads: "The Libyans have told HMG flat out that there will be 'enormous repercussions' for the UK-Libya bilateral relationship if Megrahi's early release is not handled properly [...] HMG is also adamant that, despite devolution, London controls foreign policy for the UK, not Edinburgh."

It is at a time like this when journalism should come in to its own. Forget that Vladimir Putin is known in diplomatic circles as “alpha-dog” or Angela Merkel as “Teflon” – there is simply too much at stake here to get distracted by the so-called “tittle-tattle”. As Henry Porter noted in an excellent piece for the Observer, “we have been given a snapshot of the world as it is, rather than the edited account agreed upon by diverse elites”.

Consequently, after having seen a mere 0.5% of the cables so far, we already have clear evidence that suggests members of the British political establishment have engaged in, at the very least, highly undemocratic practice. With clarity the cables confirm that unelected officials, whose faces and names are unknown to the British public, are shaping foreign policy and international relations behind closed doors. Not only this, but these same officials expect and demand the privilege of secrecy in order to do so. This not acceptable in any modern democracy.

But as the first few ripples of Cablegate reverberate through Whitehall, the present coalition government scrambles to “secure its digital borders.” And this will, of course, inevitably lead to greater secrecy and even less transparency in the future. Thus the British media must not fail to harness the moment. The press, web publications and citizen journalists should together use Cablegate to arraign the political establishment, for the good of society and the health of democracy. “You’re going to have so much information about what we do... so use it, exploit it, hold us to account,” said Prime Minister David Cameron in a video posted on YouTube less than a month ago. Now is the time to hold him to his word.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/wikileaks-use-it-exploit-it-hold-us-to-account

Cablegate

"There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy." – Joseph Pulitzer.

At approximately 6pm on Wednesday, Amazon ousted wikileaks.org from its servers after concerted and aggressive political pressure from America’s Homeland Security Committee. The move came after three solid days of ‘Cablegate’ – the largest intelligence leak in history. 251,287 dispatches from more than 250 US embassies and consulates, to be published slowly but surely in the weeks and months ahead. Among them are allegations of corruption, cover-ups and secret collusion between US and UK officials; dirty tactics exposed on a grand scale. Politicians, diplomats and corporations across the world must now be trembling. Could they be next?

As international reaction testifies, the repercussions of Cablegate are massive. Wikileaks is changing the world without invitation, and the political establishment does not approve. A global witch-hunt for Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ co-founder and figurehead, is now in full swing. Assange should be "hunted" and "executed" say prominent American politicians, who want him extradited and charged under the country’s 1917 Espionage Act, a law introduced to combat socialists and pacifists during the Red Scare. “Obama should put out a contract [to have Assange assassinated] and maybe use a drone or something,” said Professor Tom Flanagan, a former advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While in France, the birthplace of the Enlightenment, Wikileaks was described as a “threat to democracy”.

Even David Cameron, a devout convert to the church of “A New Politics”, has strongly condemned Wikileaks for their hand in Cablegate. “We condemn the unauthorised release of classified information," his spokesman said on Monday. “Governments need to be able to operate on a confidential basis when dealing with this kind of information.” Yet it was only 10 months ago, in February, that Cameron stood before an audience and proclaimed his commitment to open government and transparency. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said at the time.

In February, though, Cameron was not Prime Minister. He was still masquerading as a fresh faced candidate for change – a new alternative to the ugly political past. He could afford to pontificate about wild things like “open government” and “transparency” because there was no way to test him on it. He could tell the public what they wanted to hear, and then backtrack from his position once in government – the oldest trick in the book. His Cablegate position confirms this is indeed what he has done, quite blatantly, on the principle of “transparency”.

So far Cameron’s strategy on Cablegate has been one of avoidance and denial. "We are not going to get drawn into the detail of the documents," said his spokesman. The Prime Minister was instead in Zurich yesterday alongside David Beckham and Prince William, making a failed bid to host the World Cup in 2018. But he cannot evade the encroaching reality of this exposé for much longer. According to the cables released so far, British officials not only promised to protect US interests during the Iraq inquiry, but also made a deal with the US to allow the country to keep cluster bombs in the UK despite the ban on the munitions signed by Gordon Brown. The cluster bombs issue, it is said, was deliberately concealed from parliament and was approved by then Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Clearly this raises serious questions about what appears to be a festering culture of backroom democracy across the western world, in which Britain is complicit. Diplomatic secrecy, as critics of Wikileaks argue, may well be in some cases entirely justified and necessary – however not if it means nurturing what Assange himself describes as the “corruption of governance".

The central problem, it seems, is that this “corruption of governance” runs so deep. It is embedded within the very DNA of the political class and has been for generations, hence the high-level, across the board political resistance and opposition to the brand of total transparency advocated by Wikileaks.

Yet as politicians and other powerful figures call for the head of Assange, in their haste they have forgotten he is merely the figurehead of the organisation. The human face of Wikileaks, he is bold, brave and deeply principled. His commitment and dedication to truth and justice should be applauded. But they could hang, draw and quarter Assange and Wikileaks would still survive – thrive, even. “You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea,” as the civil rights activist Medgar Evers once said.

And an idea is precisely what Wikileaks has become. It is no longer simply a website – it is a pure expression of democratic ideals, a philosophy realised by the force of technology. The powerful may condemn and attempt to repress Wikileaks and all it represents, but the situation has long since spun far from their control. Facilitated by the internet, a new battleground has been established. All traditions now hang in the balance and all bets are off.

This article appeared originally at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/wikileaks-truth-is-not-treason