by olle johansson, sweden

by randall enos, cagle cartoons

by paul zanetti, australia

Is liberal lefty Glenn Greenwald finally showing his true colors?

“At 11:30 am this morning, I’ll be on Al Jazeera debating WikiLeaks.”

There’s a big misunderstanding about WikiLeaks. Some people seem to think that Julian Assange - yesterday arrested and denied bail in England - and his cabal dumped 250.000 unedited documents on the internet.
That is not true.
WikiLeaks has posted on its website only 960 of the 251,297 diplomatic cables it has obtained. Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them, like The Guardian (Britain), the NYT (U.S.), El Pais (Spain), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), etc.
Does he have a partner in the Netherlands?
The cables are edited to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm.
Some American politicians seem to want to prosecute everyone publishing the cables, including all journalists, newspapers, blogs etc..

Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda - from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more

In The New Republic today, Todd Gitlin writes an entire anti-WikiLeaks column that is based on an absolute factual falsehood. Anyone listening to most media accounts would believe that WikiLeaks has indiscriminately published all 250,000 of the diplomatic cables it possesses, and Gitlin — in the course of denouncing Julian Assange — bolsters this falsehood: “Wikileaks’s huge data dump, including the names of agents and recent diplomatic cables, is indiscriminate” and Assange is “fighting for a world of total transparency.”
The reality is the exact opposite — literally — of what Gitlin told TNR readers.
[read on] (more…)

American gay and lesbian students are more likely to be “harshly punished by schools and courts than their straight peers, according to a new study, even though they are less likely to engage in serious misdeeds.” The study’s authors speculated that the more severe punishments meted out might reflect a bias by school and court officials, or that the teenagers are less likely to receive support services than their straight peers.

WikiLeaks is nog nooit van iets beschuldigd.
WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange wel, van verkrachting en sexuele intimidatie in Zweden. Pas na de publicatie van de geheime documenten op zijn site WikiLeaks overigens.
Volgens Glenn Greenwald zal het heel moeilijk zijn om Julian Assange voor WikiLeaks te veroordelen. Misschien daarom dat hij zich vrijwillig gaat melden bij de politie in Groot-Brittannië om vragen te beantwoorden over de beschuldigingen van verkrachting. Assange zou zich ophouden in het Venrenigd Koninkrijk. Het eerste internationale opsporingsbevel van Interpol bevatte volgens de Britse politie te weinig informatie om in actie te komen tegen Assange. Vandaar dat Stockholm met een nieuw bevel kwam. Verder is vandaag bekend geworden dat de Zwitserse bankrekening van Assange is geblokkeerd.

Those wishing to donate to WikiLeaks can still do so here, via Options 2 (online credit card) or 3 (wire to bank in Iceland).

The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks has never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted for one or convicted of one. A consensus of legal experts agree that prosecuting the organization or Julian Assange for any of its leaks would be difficult in the extreme. Despite those facts, look at just some of the punishment that has been doled out to them and what has been threatened:
[read on] (more…)

Kijk eens. Er komt niet alleen maar rottigheid uit de Verenigde Staten van Amerika…
Hebt u dat ook die kleine irritaties in het leven?
Een warenhuis waar je om een verdieping hoger te komen via de roltrap steeds de halve zaak door moet?
Dat je tegenwoordig honderd schroeven moet kopen als je er eentje nodig bent?
Dat de verschillende tv-omroepen gezamenlijk afspreken op welk tijdstip reclame wordt uitgezonden zodat wegzappen geen zin heeft?
En op nummer een! Reclame op tv die een stuk harder staat dan het normale programma zodat je bijkans de kamer uit wordt geblazen?

The American House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill forbidding television advertisers from jacking up the volume to gain viewers’ attention. The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), said she introduced the measure after watching television with her parents, and such commercials “blew us out of the house.”

Many in the American establishment really don’t understand the internet that well. In fact many American lawmakers hardly use it. The American government, together with China and the Middle East, is trying to suppress WikiLeaks in a useless whack-a-mole effort to keep control over information on the internet. A warning is in place.
Because the internet goes two ways.
Indeed, people using the internet to spread information should be careful. The govenment is on to you. On the other hand, the government should be very careful too. Because you really don’t want to get those hackers mad. They’re able to take down the entire government.
Arresting or killing Assange could spawn the rise of a vast, permanent network of radicalized hackers systematically challenging those in power.

Stop WikiLeaks? Hahaha… you might as well try to stop rock and roll

Crooks and Liars - This WikiLeaks whack-a-mole is a reminder of DJ Alan Freed yelling, “You can stop me, but you’re never gonna stop rock and roll!”
The grownups then didn’t understand the power of rock, and the political Beltway class does not understand the power of the internets now.

From a Foreign Policy blog:

In a bid to stay one step ahead of the governments, companies, freelance hackers trying to shut down its operations, WikiLeaks mobilized its vast base of online support Saturday by asking its Twitter followers to create copies of its growing archive of hundreds of classified State Department cables.
[read on] (more…)

Khalil tells us what he thinks about the Dutch traditional figure called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) who is the helper of Sinterklaas, which in America became Santa Claus.. What do the Dutch and especially people of African descent think of Zwarte Piet? Do they agree with Khalil that Zwarte Piet is offensive, demeaning, insensitve, insulting and shameful?

Here is my opinion! Zwarte Pete is offensive, demeaning and insulting to the people of African descent. This practice was created in 1850 when slavery was extant in the Netherlands. Zwarte Pete is a reminiscent of slavery and white supremacy.

Some people might argue that this is a Dutch culture and has nothing do with black people or slavery. This is not true, it has everything do with black people, it portrays black people as buffoons and subservient. If black people are so comfortable with this insensitivity practice, how come no black willing to take part in it?

The Netherlands is different from what it used to be in the 18th century; today the country is a multicultural society. I urge the Dutch people to immediately stop this shameful act.

Khalil

gorilla

Dutch MP Wilders to Haaretz: There is a witch hunt against my party.
Haaretz: Controversial anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders to visit Israel on Sunday; demonstration expected at site of his planned speech in Tel Aviv.

The Spider-Man is finally captured. Surprise: he’s German.
Sven Koppler (37) sold tarantulas, black widows, brown recluse spiders tied up and packaged in small plastic tubes all over the world.

A German man who authorities said netted more than $300,000 by smuggling hundreds of tarantulas into the United States through the mail was expected to appear in court Friday in Los Angeles to face federal charges.
Officials said the web of “Operation Spiderman” caught Sven Koppler, 37, Thursday, shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles to meet with associates in the alleged scheme that included some endangered species of tarantula.
Koppler is charged with illegally importing wildlife into the United States, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. [read on] (more…)

WikiLeaks gaat voortdurend offline vanwege de aanhoudende druk van Amerikaanse autoriteiten en door hackers die de servers waarop WikiLeaks wordt gestald belagen. Op dit moment zou WikiLeaks hier te zien zijn.

Currently, WikiLeaks and its subsidiary site, Cablegate, where it’s slowly publishing cables, can be reached via a several URLs, including wikileaks.nl, wikileaks.de and wikileaks.fi, as well as with the 88.80.13.160 IP address

De Nederlandse journalist Henk van Ess, voorzitter van de VVOJ (Vereniging van Onderzoeksjournalisten), heeft een search-engine gemaakt om in de WikiLeaks-documenten te kunnen zoeken.
We hopen maar voor Van Ess dat Rechts Amerika er niet in zal slagen om WikiLeaks tot terroristische organisatie te verklaren. Want dan komt ook hij op de ‘most wanted list’ van Interpol te staan. Voorlopig zou ik reizen naar Amerika maar even uitstellen als ik Van Ess was, of een van zijn medebestuursleden.
Dit zijn ze trouwens, onze helden.

Reporters group launches full-text search engine of WikiLeaks cables

Computerworld - A Dutch journalist on Thursday announced the launch of a new search engine that indexes the content of all U.S. State Department cables published so far by WikiLeaks.
The search engine, CableSearch.org, lets users search the disclosed cables by word, source, security classification, classification tag and date.
[read on] (more…)

by riber hansson, sweden

Het internationale arrestatiebevel dat Zweden via Interpol zou hebben uitgevaardigd tegen WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange, is volgens Assanges advocaat Mark Stephens niet rechtsgeldig onder Zweedse, Europese en internationale wetgeving.
“Het gaat in feite om een interne memo van Interpol, wat geen bevel is. Deze memo verzoekt autoriteiten om de activiteiten van Assange in de gaten te houden, maar niet om hem op te pakken. Het arrestatiebevel is retour afzender gestuurd door Scotland Yard. Het voldeed niet aan de wet en bevatte vormfouten.”
Volgens Stephens is zijn cliënt niet eens formeel in staat van beschuldiging gesteld in Zweden.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will be charged by the Nigerian government in a massive bribery case involving $180 million in kickbacks paid to Nigerian lawmakers. Corrupt Nigerian officials awarded a $6 billion natural gas pipeline contract to the Halliburton subsidiary KBR when Dick Cheney was running the company.
Godwin Obla, prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court “in the next three days,” and an arrest warrant for Cheney “will be issued and transmitted through Interpol.”
KBR already plead guilty in the U.S. last year in relation to the bribery scheme, and along with Halliburton agreed to pay a $579 million settlement.
[read on] (more…)

The United States is trying to suppress publication of any information coming out of the Wikileaks publications. A totally useless effort of course. The American internet company Amazone announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security. Also in other parts of the world, like China and across the Arab Middle East, places where authoritarian governments tightly control the media, virtually all mention of the documents was suppressed.
The Internet, of course, is rendering decrepit would-be petty tyrants like Lieberman impotent and obsolete: WikiLeaks moved its website to a Swedish server and was accessible again within hours.
If anyone is aware of some sort of campaign to boycott Amazon’s web services over its capitulation to Joe Lieberman — and there should be one — please alert Glenn Greenwald to it. He wants to promore boycotting Amazone for being so servile to the American government.

U.S. Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security demands Internet censorship

The comparison of these two passages is so telling in so many ways:

The Washington Post, today:

Authoritarian governments and tightly controlled media in China and across the Arab Middle East have suppressed virtually all mention of the Wikileaks documents, avoiding the public backlash that could result from such candid portrayals of their leaders’ views. [read on] (more…)

wikileaks - by pavel constantin, romania

UPDATE, Dec 2, 6:20 AM: Nederland is verplicht om Julian Assange op te pakken omdat Interpol een opsporingsbevel heeft uitgevaardigd. Dat zegt een woordvoerder van het Korps Landelijke Politiediensten.

Ook Glenn Greenwald heeft grote twijfels over het feit dat WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange gisteren door Interpol op de ‘most wanted’ lijst is gezet. Dat gebeurde een dag nadat hij vertrouwelijke Amerikaanse diplomatieke gegevens publiceerde op WikiLeaks.
Waar niet aan hoeft te worden getwijfeld is dat het een bestaand patroon is. Precies hetzelfde gebeurde met klokkenluiders in het verleden. Opnieuw een teken dat de Obama-administratie zich heel weinig onderscheidt van voorgaande Amerikaanse regeringen. Glenn Greenwald somt de achtervolgde klokkenluiders op.

As soon as Scott Ritter began telling the truth about Iraqi WMDs

On the issue of the Interpol arrest warrant issued yesterday for Assange’s arrest: I think it’s deeply irresponsible either to assume his guilt or to assume his innocence until the case plays out.
I genuinely have no opinion of the validity of those allegations, but what I do know is this: as soon as Scott Ritter began telling the truth about Iraqi WMDs, he was publicly smeared with allegations of sexual improprieties.
As soon as Eliot Spitzer began posing a real threat to Wall Street criminals, a massive and strange federal investigation was launched over nothing more than routine acts of consensual adult prostitution, ending his career (and the threat he posed to oligarchs).
And now, the day after Julian Assange is responsible for one of the largest leaks in history, an arrest warrant issues that sharply curtails his movement and makes his detention highly likely. It’s unreasonable to view that pattern as evidence that the allegations are part of some conspiracy — I genuinely do not believe or disbelieve that — but, particularly in light of that pattern, it’s most definitely unreasonable to assume that he’s guilty of anything without having those allegations tested and then proven in court.

De meest felle critici in Amerika van de publicatie van geheime documenten op WikiLeaks, de mensen die vinden dat WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange moet worden vermoord, of tenminste opgesloten en die hem bestempelen tot terrorist, zijn dezelfde mensen die Amerika hebben opgehitst tot een aanval op een land dat geen enkele bedreiging vormde voor het machtigste land ter wereld. Het zijn de mensen die indirect mede verantwoordelijk zijn voor de meest schandelijke oorlog van de laatste decennia.
Ze eisen geen berechting van de mensen die direct verantwoordelijk zijn geweest voor die schanddaad. Ze eisen het bloed van de man die de muur van geheimzinnigheid neerhaalt waarachter deze acties zijn gepland. Glenn Greenwald beschrijft de hypocrieten.

The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics if any

Joe Klein writes this in Time Magazine about the WikiLeaks disclosures:

I am tremendously concernced [sic] about the puerile eruptions of Julian Assange… If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in “freedom” stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He’s the one who should be in jail.

Greenwald - Do you have that principle down? If “a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail” because of the WikiLeaks disclosure — even a “single one” — then the entire WikiLeaks enterprise is proven to be a “disaster” and “Assange is a criminal” who “should be in jail.” That’s quite a rigorous moral standard. So let’s apply it elsewhere:
What about the most destructive “anarchic exercise in ‘freedom’” the planet has known for at least a generation: the “human disaster” known as the attack on Iraq, which Klein supported? That didn’t result in the imprisonment of “a single foreign national,” but rather the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of a country of 26 million people. Are those who supported that “anarchic exercise in ‘freedom’” — or at least those responsible for its execution — also “criminals who should be in jail”?
[read on] (more…)

Twijfelt er iemand aan het verband tussen de publicatie van vertrouwelijke Amerikaanse diplomatie op Wikileaks en het feit dat Interpol Julian Assange, de oprichter van Wikileaks, vandaag op de ‘most wanted’ lijst heeft gezet?

Interpol has put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on most-wanted list

Interpol, at the request of a Swedish court looking into alleged sex crimes from earlier this year, has put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on its most-wanted list.
The Stockholm Criminal Court two weeks ago issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on probable cause, saying he is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and illegal use of force in August incidents. [read on] (more…)

by emad hajjaj, jordan

Curious it is that Republicans, hardliners, and neoconservatives anxious to proclaim “American exceptionalism” - which, stripped down, means that America can and should do anything it wants around the world because it’s the greatest - are now trumpeting the fact that, according to Wikileaks at least, various leaders of the Arab Gulf kleptocracies are calling for the United States to attack Iran.
You’d think that the U.S could safely ignore, and privately laugh at, the policy recommendations made by kings, royal sheiks and emirs of the gulf states. The leaders of these nations—and most of them, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE, really don’t deserve to be called “nations” - are anyway for the most part puppets of the United States. Three of them (Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain) are essentially US-occupied territories, hosting American ground troops, naval forces and an air force base; and the fourth, the UAE, is not really populated by its own citizens but by imported South Asians, Iranians and others, and made up of a series of family-ruled sheikhdoms run by utterly corrupt and degenerate, inbred gangsters. (Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation)

Wat is dit voor krankzinnig verhaal? Voor alle duidelijkheid dit gaat dus niet over Joran van der Sloot maar over een Nederlander genaamd Jack Sanford Staing die voor drugssmokkel sinds 2009 in de Lurigancho gevangenis in Lima zit. Volgens het blog Living in Peru zou Leslie Dayán Paredes bij een bezoek aan haar Nederlandse vriend door hem zijn gewurgd en verborgen in de cel.
Wat is dat voor een gevangenis? Een Peruaanse vrouw komt op bezoek in augustus, wordt gedood en begraven, en pas drie maanden later wordt ze in de cel gevonden?

New killing of Peruvian woman by Dutch prisoner, not Joran van der Sloot, in Peruvian prison triggers investigation

Peru’s National Police suspended personnel from the Lurigancho prison that could be held responsible for the murder of a Peruvian citizen by a Dutch prisoner, reported RPP.
Yesterday, the chief of the National Penitentiary Institute, Wilson Hernández, informed that the body of Leslie Dayán Paredes, had been found inside the prison.
Dayán Paredes, 22, was killed by Dutch citizen Jack Sanford Staing, last August.
Sanford, who serves a prison sentence for drug trafficking, since May 2009, buried the body inside the wall of his cell. [read on] (more…)

by paresh nath, the khaleej times, uae