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<blockquote type="cite">China is the worst offender. China has
aggressive, sophisticated interception technology that places itself
between every reader inside China and every information source outside
China. We've been fighting a running battle to make sure we can get
information through, and there are now all sorts of ways Chinese
readers can get on to our site."</blockquote>
<br>
Back in the early 90's the term "bamboo curtain" used to be used to
describe China's rather isolationist policy, as<br>
opposed to the Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe. An iron curtain is nigh
impenetrable. A bamboo curtain<br>
can snap closed suddenly, according to the analogy.<br>
<br>
Now I would describe it as more of a "Beaded Curtain". The curtain is
there sometimes but it doesnt<br>
provide much of a barrier. My Chinese friends are at least as familiar
with Wikileaks as I am.<br>
<br>
Most of the Chinese that I know are quite familiar with the means of
negotiating around the curtain, anyway.<br>
<br>
YouTube is seriously hindered in favour of the homegrown Chinese
competitors like YouKu.com and Tudou.com, etc,<br>
both of which often offer material that YouTube would not permit. Lots
of YouTube videos are replicated<br>
on YouKu, Tudou, and Renren, etc.<br>
<br>
Woman going crazy down on Caroline Street. <br>
Actually its Nanjing...<br>
In a "flash" all hell has broken loose...'she was gone and I was black
and blue...'<br>
<a href="http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/1OZJg-XfbI0/">http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/1OZJg-XfbI0/</a><br>
<br>
Google is partially blocked or harassed in some markets in favour of
the local competitors baidu.com, sina.com, sohu.com, etc while<br>
yahoo.com is not generally messed with. I met Google's COO at a
get-together here recently and we discussed animal production in China<br>
and etc. He said that Google's business in china is the sales of
geographically specific advertisements that appear on websites all over
china.<br>
The fact that there search engine is often messed with does not
interfere with Google's core business in china, which is web
advertising.<br>
<br>
ChinaSMACK (<a href="http://www.chinasmack.com">http://www.chinasmack.com</a>)
covers one portion of the often silly side of urban Chinese pop culture
and might be interesting to some.<br>
<blockquote>chinaSMACK is a daily-updated collection of translated
internet content from the Chinese-language internet. These latest
stories, pictures, videos, and topics have become very popular,
spreading across China’s major BBS forums, social networking websites,
or through email forwards sent between normal Chinese people everyday.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
Chinasmack is not blocked at all in Beijing. I don't care. I seldom
have much interest in pop kitsch. The Chinese know much more<br>
about western and US pop kitsch than I do.<br>
<br>
chinasmack notes one way to circumvent the curtain (there are other
ways)--<br>
<blockquote>Certain parts of the website includes information from
websites that may be blocked in China (or other countries) such as
YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. As a result, any page of our website
that includes information from these blocked websites may cause the
page to load more slowly than normal. When we embed YouTube videos and
YouTube is blocked in your country, you will only see a blank square.
We have designed the website to minimize this unfortunate effect upon
your browsing experience and thank you for your understanding that
these are beyond our control. One way to avoid this problem is to use a
proxy or VPN. For example, chinaSMACK has tested VPN services by <a
href="http://www.chinasmack.com/go/freedur" target="_blank">Freedur</a>
and <a href="http://www.chinasmack.com/go/fbvpn" target="_blank">FBVPN</a>.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
chinasmack has this to say about what some "liberals" would call "vile
hate speech": --<br>
<blockquote>We believe racism and bigotry is a major part of the
internet, including the Chinese-language internet. We try to offer an
honest look into the big Chinese-language internet, so we will
sometimes translate racist Chinese and racist Chinese comments. As a
result, we believe it would be unfair to hide the racism and bigotry of
non-Chinese people.
<p>This does not mean we will not moderate racism and bigotry
completely. It only means that we will not pretend it does not exist.
It is not our goal or policy to hide the truths about people and
society. Please fight racism and bigotry by condemning it wherever you
see it.<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>chinasmack also has a glossary of popular internet slang.<br>
</p>
<a href="http://www.chinasmack.com/glossary#%E6%93%8D%E4%BD%A0%E5%A6%88">http://www.chinasmack.com/glossary#%E6%93%8D%E4%BD%A0%E5%A6%88</a><br>
<a href="http://www.chinasmack.com/glossary#SB">http://www.chinasmack.com/glossary#SB</a><br>
<blockquote><br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 1/15/2011 9:38 AM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:CABDB1C1-9022-45A0-9CF4-24D7CD46D08C@comcast.net"
type="cite">
<h1 class="print-title"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">John Pilger's
Investigation Into the War on WikiLeaks and His Interview With Julian
Assange</span></font></h1>
<div class="print-submitted">John Pilger | Friday 14 January 2011</div>
<p><img moz-do-not-send="true"
style="float: left; padding-right: 2em;"
src="http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/011411-5.jpg" alt=""><br>
</p>
<div class="print-content">
<p class="rteleft">The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian
Assange, are a response to an information revolution that threatens old
power orders in politics and journalism. The incitement to murder
trumpeted by public figures in the United States, together with
attempts by the Obama administration to corrupt the law and send
Assange to a hell-hole prison for the rest of his life, are the
reactions of a rapacious system exposed as never before.</p>
<p class="rteleft">In recent weeks, the US Justice Department has
established a secret grand jury just across the river from Washington
in the eastern district of the state of Virginia. The object is to
indict Assange under a discredited espionage act used to arrest peace
activists during the First World War, or one of the "war on terror"
conspiracy statutes that have degraded American justice. Judicial
experts describe the jury as a "deliberate set up," pointing out that
this corner of Virginia is home to the employees and families of the
Pentagon, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other pillars of
American power.</p>
<p class="rteleft">"This is not good news," Assange told me when we
spoke this past week, his voice dark and concerned. He says he can have
"bad days - but I recover." When we met in London last year, I said,
"You are making some very serious enemies, not least of all the most
powerful government engaged in two wars. How do you deal with that
sense of danger?" His reply was characteristically analytical. "It's
not that fear is absent. But courage is really the intellectual mastery
over fear - by an understanding of what the risks are and how to
navigate a path through them."</p>
<p class="rteleft">Regardless of the threats to his freedom and
safety, he says the US is not WikiLeaks' main "technological enemy."
"China is the worst offender. China has aggressive, sophisticated
interception technology that places itself between every reader inside
China and every information source outside China. We've been fighting a
running battle to make sure we can get information through, and there
are now all sorts of ways Chinese readers can get on to our site."</p>
<p class="rteleft">It was in this spirit of "getting information
through" that WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, but with a moral
dimension. "The goal is justice," wrote Assange on the homepage, "the
method is transparency." Contrary to a current media mantra, WikiLeaks
material is not "dumped." Less than one percent of the 251,000 US
embassy cables have been released. As Assange points out, the task of
interpreting material and editing that which might harm innocent
individuals demands "standards [befitting] higher levels of information
and primary sources." To secretive power, this is journalism at its
most dangerous.</p>
<p class="rteleft">On 18 March 2008, a war on WikiLeaks was foretold
in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the "Cyber
Counterintelligence Assessments Branch." US intelligence, it said,
intended to destroy the feeling of "trust," which is WikiLeaks' "center
of gravity." It planned to do this with threats to "exposure [and]
criminal prosecution." Silencing and criminalizing this rare source of
independent journalism was the aim: smear the method. Hell hath no fury
like imperial Mafiosi scorned.</p>
<p class="rteleft">Others, also scorned, have lately played a
supporting part, intentionally or not, in the hounding of Assange, some
for reasons of petty jealousy. Sordid and shabby describe their
behavior, which serves only to highlight the injustice against a man
who has courageously revealed what we have a right to know.</p>
<p class="rteleft">As the US Justice Department, in its hunt for
Assange, subpoenas the Twitter and email accounts, banking and credit
card records of people around the world - as if we are all subjects of
the United States - much of the "free" media on both sides of the
Atlantic direct their indignation at the hunted.</p>
<p class="rteleft">"So, Julian, why won't you go back to Sweden now?"
demanded the headline over Catherine Bennett's Observer column on 19
December, which questioned Assange's response to allegations of sexual
misconduct with two women in Stockholm last August. "To keep delaying
the moment of truth, for this champion of fearless disclosure and total
openness," wrote Bennett, "could soon begin to look pretty dishonest,
as well as inconsistent." Not a word in Bennett's vitriol considered
the looming threats to Assange's basic human rights and his physical
safety, as described by Geoffrey Robertson QC, in the extradition
hearing in London on 11 January.</p>
<p class="rteleft">In response to Bennett, the editor of the online
Nordic News Network in Sweden, Al Burke, wrote to the Observer
explaining, "plausible answers to Catherine Bennett's tendentious
question" were both critically important and freely available. Assange
had remained in Sweden for more than five weeks after the rape
allegation was made - and subsequently dismissed by the chief
prosecutor in Stockholm - and that repeated attempts by him and his
Swedish lawyer to meet a second prosecutor, who reopened the case
following the intervention of a government politician, had failed. And
yet, as Burke pointed out, this prosecutor had granted him permission
to fly to London where "he also offered to be interviewed - a normal
practice in such cases." So, it seems odd, at the very least, that the
prosecutor then issued a European arrest warrant. The Observer did not
publish Burke's letter.</p>
<p class="rteleft">This record straightening is crucial because it
describes the perfidious behavior of the Swedish authorities - a
bizarre sequence confirmed to me by other journalists in Stockholm and
by Assange's Swedish lawyer Bjorn Hurtig. Not only that, Burke
cataloged the unforeseen danger Assange faces should he be extradited
to Sweden. "Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to
England," he wrote, "clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently
submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to
civil rights. There is ample reason for concern that if Assange were to
be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over
to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights."</p>
<p class="rteleft">These documents have been virtually ignored in
Britain. They show that the Swedish political class has moved far from
the perceived neutrality of a generation ago and that the country's
military and intelligence apparatus is all but absorbed into
Washington's matrix around NATO. In a 2007 cable, the US Embassy in
Stockholm lauds the Swedish government dominated by the conservative
Moderate Party of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt as coming "from a
new political generation and not bound by [anti-US] traditions [and] in
practice a pragmatic and strong partner with NATO, having troops under
NATO command in Kosovo and Afghanistan."</p>
<p class="rteleft">The cable reveals how foreign policy is largely
controlled by Carl Bildt, the current foreign minister, whose career
has been based on a loyalty to the United States that goes back to the
Vietnam War when he attacked Swedish public television for broadcasting
evidence that the US was bombing civilian targets. Bildt played a
leading role in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a lobby group
with close ties to the White House of George W. Bush, the CIA and the
far right of the Republican Party.</p>
<p class="rteleft">"The significance of all this for the Assange
case," notes Burke in a recent study, "is that it will be Carl Bildt
and perhaps other members of the Reinfeldt government who will decide -
openly or, more likely, furtively behind a façade of legal formality -
on whether or not to approve the anticipated US request for
extradition. Everything in their past clearly indicates that such a
request will be granted."</p>
<p class="rteleft">For example, in December 2001, with the "war on
terror" under way, the Swedish government abruptly revoked the
political refugee status of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed
al-Zari. They were handed to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport
and "rendered" to Egypt, where they were tortured. When the Swedish
ombudsman for justice investigated and found that their human rights
had been "seriously violated," it was too late.</p>
<p class="rteleft"><em><a moz-do-not-send="true" target="_blank"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/newsletter">Independent journalism is
important. Click here to get Truthout stories sent to your email.</a></em></p>
<p class="rteleft">The implications for the Assange case are clear.
Both men were removed without due process of law and before their
lawyers could file appeals to the European Human Rights Court and in
response to a US threat to impose a trade embargo on Sweden. Last year,
Assange applied for residency in Sweden, hoping to base WikiLeaks
there. It is widely believed that Washington warned Sweden through
mutual intelligence contacts of the potential consequences. In
December, prosecutor Marianne Ny, who reactivated the Assange case,
discussed the possibility of Assange's extradition to the US on her web
site.</p>
<p class="rteleft">Almost six months after the sex allegations were
first made public, Assange has been charged with no crime, but his
right to a presumption of innocence has been willfully denied. The
unfolding events in Sweden have been farcical, at best. The Australian
barrister James Catlin, who acted for Assange in October, describes the
Swedish justice system as "a laughing stock ... There is no precedent
for it. The Swedes are making it up as they go along." He says that
Assange, apart from noting contradictions in the case, has not publicly
criticized the women who made the allegations against him. It was the
police who tipped off the Swedish equivalent of the Sun, Expressen,
with defamatory material about them, initiating a trial by media across
the world.</p>
<p class="rteleft">In Britain, this trial has welcomed yet more eager
prosecutors, with the BBC to the fore. There was no presumption of
innocence in Kirsty Wark's "Newsnight" court in December. "Why don't
you just apologise to the women?" she demanded of Assange, followed by:
"Do we have your word of honour that you won't abscond?" On Radio 4's
"Today" program, John Humphrys, the partner of Bennett, told Assange
that he was obliged to go back to Sweden "because the law says you
must." The hectoring Humphrys, however, had more pressing interests.
"Are you a sexual predator?" he asked. Assange replied that the
suggestion was ridiculous, to which Humphrys demanded to know how many
women he had slept with.</p>
<p class="rteleft">"Would even Fox News have descended to that
level?" wondered the American historian William Blum. "I wish Assange
had been raised in the streets of Brooklyn, as I was. He then would
have known precisely how to reply to such a question: 'You mean
including your mother?'"</p>
<p class="rteleft">What is most striking about these "interviews" is
not so much their arrogance and lack of intellectual and moral
humility; it is their indifference to fundamental issues of justice and
freedom and their imposition of narrow, prurient terms of reference.
Fixing these boundaries allows the interviewer to diminish the
journalistic credibility of Assange and WikiLeaks, whose remarkable
achievements stand in vivid contrast to their own. It is like watching
the old and stale, guardians of the status quo, struggling to prevent
the emergence of the new.</p>
<p class="rteleft">In this media trial, there is a tragic dimension,
obviously for Assange, but also for the best of mainstream journalism.
Having published a slew of professionally brilliant editions with the
WikiLeaks disclosures, feted all over the world, The Guardian recovered
its establishment propriety on 17 December by turning on its besieged
source. A major article by the paper's senior correspondent Nick Davies
claimed that he had been given the "complete" Swedish police file with
its "new" and "revealing" salacious morsels.</p>
<p class="rteleft">Assange's Swedish lawyer Hurtig says that crucial
evidence is missing from the file given to Davies, including "the fact
that the women were re-interviewed and given an opportunity to change
their stories" and the tweets and SMS messages between them, which are
"critical to bringing justice in this case." Vital exculpatory evidence
is also omitted, such as the statement by the original prosecutor, Eva
Finne, that "Julian Assange is not suspected of rape."</p>
<p class="rteleft">Having reviewed the Davies article, Assange's
former barrister James Catlin wrote to me: "The complete absence of due
process is the story and Davies ignores it. Why does due process
matter? Because the massive powers of two arms of government are being
brought to bear against the individual whose liberty and reputation are
at stake." I would add: so is his life.<br>
<br>
The Guardian has profited hugely from the WikiLeaks disclosures, in
many ways. On the other hand, WikiLeaks, which survives on mostly small
donations and can no longer receive funds through many banks and credit
companies thanks to the bullying of Washington, has received nothing
from the paper. In February, Random House will publish a Guardian book
that is sure to be a lucrative best seller, which Amazon is advertising
as "The End of Secrecy: the Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks." When I asked
David Leigh, the Guardian executive in charge of the book, what was
meant by "fall," he replied that Amazon was wrong and that the working
title had been "The Rise (and Fall?) of WikiLeaks." "Note parenthesis
and query," he wrote, "Not meant for publication anyway." (The book is
now described on the Guardian web site as "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian
Assange's War on Secrecy.") Still, with all that duly noted, the sense
is that "real" journalists are back in the saddle. Too bad about the
new boy, who never really belonged.</p>
<p class="rteleft">On 11 January, Assange's first extradition hearing
was held at Belmarsh Magistrates Court, an infamous address because it
is here that people were, before the advent of control orders,
consigned to Britain's own Guantanamo, Belmarsh prison. The change from
ordinary Westminster magistrates' court was due to a lack of press
facilities, according to the authorities. That they announced this on
the day Vice President Joe Biden declared Assange a "high tech
terrorist" was no doubt coincidental, though the message was not.</p>
<p class="rteleft">For his part, Assange is just as worried about
what will happen to Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower, being
held in horrific conditions which the US National Commission on Prisons
calls "tortuous." At 23, Private Manning is the world's pre-eminent
prisoner of conscience, having remained true to the Nuremberg principle
that every soldier has the right to "a moral choice." His suffering
mocks the notion of the land of the free.</p>
<p class="rteleft">"Government whistleblowers," said Barack Obama,
running for president in 2008, "are part of a healthy democracy and
must be protected from reprisal." Obama has since pursued and
prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president in American
history.</p>
<p class="rteleft">"Cracking Bradley Manning is the first step,"
Assange told me. "The aim clearly is to break him and force a
confession that he somehow conspired with me to harm the national
security of the United States. In fact, I'd never heard his name before
it was published in the press. WikiLeaks technology was designed from
the very beginning to make sure that we never knew the identities or
names of people submitting material. We are as untraceable as we are
uncensorable. That's the only way to assure sources they are protected."</p>
<p class="rteleft">He adds: "I think what's emerging in the
mainstream media is the awareness that if I can be indicted, other
journalists can, too. Even the New York Times is worried. This used not
to be the case. If a whistleblower was prosecuted, publishers and
reporters were protected by the First Amendment that journalists took
for granted. That's being lost. The release of the Iraq and Afghanistan
war logs, with their evidence of the killing of civilians, hasn't
caused this - it's the exposure and embarrassment of the political
class: the truth of what governments say in secret, how they lie in
public; how wars are started. They don't want the public to know these
things and scapegoats must be found."</p>
<p class="rteleft">What about the allusions to the "fall" of
WikiLeaks? "There is no fall," he said. "We have never published as
much as we are now. WikiLeaks is now mirrored on more than 2,000
websites. I can't keep track of the of the spin-off sites: those who
are doing their own WikiLeaks ... If something happens to me or to
WikiLeaks, 'insurance' files will be released. They speak more of the
same truth to power, including the media. There are 504 US embassy
cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch
and Newscorp."</p>
<p class="rteleft">The latest propaganda about the "damage" caused by
WikiLeaks is a warning by the US State Department to "hundreds of human
rights activists, foreign government officials and business people
identified in leaked diplomatic cables of possible threats to their
safety." This was how The New York Times dutifully relayed it on 8
January, and it is bogus. In a letter to Congress, Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates has admitted that no sensitive intelligence sources have
been compromised. On 28 November, McClatchy Newspapers reported, "US
officials conceded they have no evidence to date that the [prior]
release of documents led to anyone's death." NATO in Kabul told CNN it
could not find a single person who needed protecting.</p>
<p class="rteleft">The great American playwright Arthur Miller wrote:
"The thought that the state ... is punishing so many innocent people is
intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied." What
WikiLeaks has given us is truth, including rare and precious insight
into how and why so many innocent people have suffered in reigns of
terror disguised as wars and executed in our name; and how the United
States has secretly and wantonly intervened in democratic governments
from Latin America to its most loyal ally in Britain.</p>
<p class="rteleft">Javier Moreno, the editor of El Pais, which
published the WikiLeaks logs in Spain, wrote, "I believe that the
global interest sparked by the WikiLeaks papers is mainly due to the
simple fact that they conclusively reveal the extent to which
politicians in the West have been lying to their citizens."</p>
<p class="rteleft">Crushing individuals like Assange and Manning is
not difficult for a great power, however craven. The point is, we
should not allow it to happen, which means those of us meant to keep
the record straight should not collaborate in any way. Transparency and
information, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, are the "currency" of
democratic freedom. "Every news organisation," a leading American
constitutional lawyer told me, "should recognize that Julian Assange is
one of them and that his prosecution will have a huge and chilling
effect on journalism."</p>
<p class="rteleft">My favorite secret document - leaked by WikiLeaks,
of course - is from the Ministry of Defense in London. It describes
journalists who serve the public without fear or favor as "subversive"
and "threats." Such a badge of honor.<br>
</p>
</div>
<div class="print-source_url"><strong>Source URL:</strong> <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/the-war-wikileaks-john-pilgers-investigation-and-interview-with-julian-assange66847">http://www.truth-out.org/the-war-wikileaks-john-pilgers-investigation-and-interview-with-julian-assange66847</a></div>
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