Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Reporting Manning and WikiLeaks, new media trumps old

Who would have thought that the biggest story of 2010 would turn out not to have been broken by "the newspaper of record," but a motley assortment of new media outlets?   Who would have thought that online publications would be spearheading the lion's share of the real investigative journalism concerning WikiLeaks?

The big question of 2010 is how WikiLeaks obtained 250,000 diplomatic cables.  Today, the US government apparently wants to show that Julian Assange conspired with Private First Class Bradley Manning to obtain the cables.   And where must a reader turn for investigative journalism on this story?   You will want to start with Salon (here and here), BoingBoing, Gawker, CNET (here, here, and here), and Fire Dog Lake (here, documentation here, here, and here).

Ironically, concerning the matter of WikiLeaks' relation to Private First Class Manning, presumed "leaker" of 250,000 diplomatic cables, the role of the New York Times and Wired is more reminiscent of how WikiLeaks operates than any classic model of investigative reporting (WikiLeaks being a journalistic organization that publishes material devoid of context or accompanying analysis).

Yet, certainly with respect to one of the most important stories of 2010, comparing the NYT and Wired to WikiLeaks is grossly unfair to WikiLeaks.  WikiLeaks provides us with entire source documents (example). This means that in so far as information consistently gets redacted from the cables to protect innocent parties, readers of WikiLeaks cables can at least see how much info has been removed, and where.   

On the other hand,  Wired's approach to the story has been to relay a few excerpts of an extended online chat between Manning and Lamo, the former hacker who "outed" Bradly Manning.   To this day, Wired is sitting on vast portions of unpublished conversation logs between Manning and Lamo absolutely relevant to story of how WikiLeaks obtained the cables.   Nor has Wired released transcripts merely showing where a determination had been made that content of a private nature had to have been redacted.  Wired is silent.  The New York Times might have provided necessary context when its own reporter interviewed Lamo, but did not.  For example, Times readers were not informed that Lamo, its source for the its Dec. 15 article on Manning, had a criminal record and had recently been consigned to involuntary psychiatric care.   Jane Hamsher of FDL writes, "There are many inconsistencies in Lamo’s many stories, as Marcy Wheeler has documented, yet the normally excellent Charlie Savage lets Lamo serve as sole source for a highly dubious story in the pages of the New York Times."  The paper's only recent investigate article on the WikiLeaks-Manning connection is an example of context-deficient reporting, largely devoid of analysis.

If Watergate happened today, its all too easy to imagine where we wouldn't read about it first.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Alleged

al·leged adj \ə-ˈlejd, -ˈle-jəd\ 1 : asserted to be true or to exist 2 : questionably true or of a specified kind : supposed, so-called 3 : accused but not proven or convicted
The Washington Post explains its support for the administration's position that it has the right to order targeted killings of American citizens abroad:
Executive decisions
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 
The Obama administration has a federal judge to thank for ensuring that executive branch and congressional leaders and not those in judicial robes will, at least for now, continue to call the shots on targeted killings. 
That determination was made in a case involving Anwar al-Aulaqi, the U.S.-born Yemeni cleric and al-Qaeda operative designated as a terrorist by the United States this year. Mr. Aulaqi is reportedly on a "kill list" of terrorism suspects for his alleged roles in the Fort Hood massacre and the attempted downing of a U.S. airliner by the would-be underwear bomber. Mr. Aulaqi's father filed suit to stop the administration from carrying out a strike against his son....  
Here's another editorial published in the same newspaper, seven years ago:
Editorial 
Irrefutable
 Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A36
AFTER SECRETARY OF STATE Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Powell left no room to argue seriously that Iraq has accepted the Security Council's offer of a "final opportunity" to disarm. And he offered a powerful new case that Saddam Hussein's regime is cooperating with a branch of the al Qaeda organization that is trying to acquire chemical weapons and stage attacks in Europe. Mr. Powell's evidence, including satellite photographs, audio recordings and reports from detainees and other informants, was overwhelming. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, called it "powerful and irrefutable."
Amnesia?

Obama Administration's new definition of a "court"

The lede to "Detainee Review Proposal Is Prepared for President," a New York Times article:
President Obama’s advisers have been drafting an executive order that would set up a system for periodically reviewing the cases of Guantánamo prisoners whom courts have approved for detention without trial, officials said.
Courts.  Naturally I assume "courts" means actual courts of law with real judges.  But how do courts approve detention without trial?  We'll get to that.  Another statement from the article:
Currently 174 prisoners remain at the base, 48 of whom the administration has decided to keep holding indefinitely without trial. Several dozen more are Yemenis who have been deemed eligible for eventual repatriation if and when security conditions improve in their country.
Presently, the administration decides which prisoners to detain without trail.   But in the future, the courts will decide?   The Times describes the Administration plan:
The Obama proposal ... would establish a “periodic review board” drawn from many agencies, not just the military, and modeled on a parole board, one official said. Detainees would be represented by lawyers and would have greater access to some of the evidence against them....
The Obama administration’s proposal ... would supplement such habeas corpushearings in court. While judges would determine whether it was lawful to hold someone as a wartime detainee — because he is part of Al Qaeda or the Taliban — the review boards would determine whether it was necessary to do so, one official explained.
It looks to me as if the Obama Administration is pretending that if real judges and "review boards" meet together in the same room (i.e. "in court") then they can claim that a "court" has approved detention without trial.  Yet if you were a prisoner caught in this system, your future would ultimately depend not on court judges and their assessment of "lawful," but some review board's definition of "necessary."

Some court.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Apple removes WikiLeaks from App Store

Apple has removed the WikiLeaks App for the iphone from its App Store.  According to The New York Times Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said the company had removed the app "because it violated our developer guidelines.  Muller added,  "Apps must comply with all local laws and may not put an individual or group in harm’s way."   Plain and simple, removing WikiLeaks from a store is an act of political censorship.   On one hand, the move  appears to  put Apple in a similar category as  PayPal, Amazon, MasterCard, Amex, and Visa -- corporate saboteurs of WikiLeaks doing the US government's bidding.    On the other hand,  Apple's move would not appear likely to cause comparable damage to WikiLeaks.

Actually, there's no comparison.  Apple's move, though largely symbolic, is utterly soul-wrenching.   Partly that's on account of the nature of Apple's decision: overt political censorship.  Yet the stench is worse because it evokes deep hypocrisy.  I dare say spiritual corruption.  Such a deed as this, at such a time as this, from this company!

The global dominance of the Apple brand today rests upon a wildly successful marketing campaign launched by a legendary 1984 Super Bowl television commercial.  The sixty-second spot is to be counted among the most famous advertisements of all time.  In the ad, Apple promised that "1984 won't be like 1984."  The commercial alluded to 1984, George Orwell's classic 1949 novel about daily life in an authoritarian global society set in the future.   On a practical level, Apple was declaring to the world that it's vision of personal computing (the Macintosh) represented a liberating alternative to the soul-destroying hyper-conformist business mentality embodied by then-dominant IBM.   Ever since, Apple Computer's ad campaigns have remained true to this brand image, continually reminding the public that Apple is forever on the side of society's non-conformists, humanistic creative pioneers like Gandhi or Einstein, individuals who "Think Different."   Jullian Assange would not have looked out of place on one of those Apple posters.



Arguably, in the late fall of 2010, not only the United States, but also the UK, Sweden, and the entire global community, appeared to have arrived at a particularly dangerous juncture in its history.  As I tweeted Monday, "The real threat isn't WikiLeaks, it's governments using the leaks as an excuse to take away freedom of speech/press."   This threat, according to the expert witnesses I heard speak at a Justice Committee hearing of the US Congress last week, seems all too real.   There is a growing sense  that the  success of the government-sponsored attacks on WikiLeaks could be a precursor to a global civilization characterized by more censorship and less free speech.

At a time when the WikiLeaks affair has alerted a number of people to the risks, it would be shocking to think that Apple has already chosen sides.  It would be just like 1984.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Essential WikiLeaks reading


At the House Judiciary Committee meeting on WikiLeaks and the First Amendment, consumer advocate Ralph Nader asked that four statements by distinguished persons be placed on the official record.

Actually, I would recommend these brief statements to anyone concerned with understanding the  potential ramifications of the attacks against WikiLeaks. These items, authored by persons from  different ends of the political spectrum, show us what's at stake.  Their message is that whatever concerns you or I may have about persons associated with WikiLeaks, treating them as potential criminals poses dangers of an altogether greater magnitude than the leaks themselves.
  1. A statement by Jack Goldsmith, a conservative Republican who served in the Department of Justice during the Bush Administration.
  2. Forbes interview with Julian Assange. Assange announces a forthcoming release by WikiLeaks that will show a corporate cover-up by the banking industry.
  3. A 'Letter to the America' signed by 93,000 Australians published as a full-page ad in Thursday's  New York Times.  The ad was sponsored by GetUp.org.au." See above, PdF here.   
  4. Ron Paul statement on the House floor on "lying us into war."  The statement includes 10 questions to consider.  I've posted the video below.



    Other statements
    To Ralph Nader's list, I would add

    5.  "Getting to Assange through Manning," by constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald.  It's a response to the specific legal arguments that the US government is said to be planning to use against WikiLeaks as first reported in the New York Times on the day of the hearing.

    Sunday, December 19, 2010

    Thai media coverage of WikiLeaks revelations



    Video hat-tip New Mandala.   In case you haven't been following the WikiLeaks revelations concerning Thailand, the website is a good place to start.

    On a related note, on Thursday I heard Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at GWU, tell the House Judiciary Committee, “In the long run it is in the interest of US national security to have foreign governments more accountable.” Ralph Nader elaborated further on this much-overlooked but crucial point.

    The Economist betrays its core principles

    Not long ago, The Economist was an interesting magazine. These days, its opinions are indistinguishable from Wall Street Journal op-eds, it's capacity for reasoned argument similarly stunted.  It's as if the Economist is lost.  As a reader today, I get the uneasy feeling the journal is pandering to the perceived prejudices of its growing American subscription base.   I think they're making a mistake, because if I wanted to read an issue of Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or Commentary, I'd have bought one.

    WikiLeaks, a fellow publisher, is under attack from big government.   What is the response of The Economist?
    BIG crimes deserve tough responses. In any country the theft and publication of 250,000 secret government documents would deserve punishment. If the leak costs lives, let alone the careers and trust that have already perished amid the WikiLeaks disclosures, the case for action is even stronger.
    At this point, under 2,000 cables have been published. And every single cable WikiLeaks has published to date has been published in conjunction with a widely respected newspaper.   Furthermore, only a small fraction of the cables WikiLeaks claims to possess are classified as "secret" (hundreds of thousands of Americans have access to secret-level classification).  Punishment?   It's not even clear that laws were broken.   If the publication of the diplomatic cables warrants punishment, writers and editors at the New York Times and other many other newspapers face prison sentences.  What will this mean for freedom of the press?      The Economist claims to want a "tough response" but is conspicuously silent on all the "tough" questions.   

    "If the leaks cost lives... the case for action is even stronger."  One thing that distinguishes Anglo-American law from say, a state of lawlessness, is that law considers "intent."   Did WikiLeaks and its newspaper co-publishers intend to cause harm?
    ... Removing illicit material from the internet is hard. But governments spend a lot of money, rightly, on chasing child pornography, bomb-making techniques and copyright breaches to the internet’s margins....  
    It looks to me as if the Economist is in a race to the bottom with CNN regarding its choice of metaphors.  Recall that CNN compared WikiLeaks to cop killers,  a serial bank-robber, and a fugitive "Pot King."

    Does the Economist have the courage to defend economic liberalism, the free market?
    Businesses will go their own way. Some, such as PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, which handled donations to WikiLeaks, and Amazon, which provided web-hosting services, have dumped it as a customer in response to American outrage. More may follow. They risk attacks from its fans, just as those that refuse face hostility from their customers in America. Too bad: business is full of hard choices.
    Except that's not how it happened.    The fact of the matter is that government officials pressured private companies not to do business with WikiLeaks, obstructing commerce. For example, see "Amazon drops WikiLeaks under political pressure" (AFP) or "Cables visualization pulled after pressure from Joe Lieberman" (Guardian).  The government conspired to interfere with the marketplace in a way that ought to be abhorrent to any publication that sees itself as an advocate for economic liberalism.    There was a time when The Economist had strong convictions.    The Economist once maintained that consumers, not government officials, should decide what private organizations or publishers they wished to support.   Sadly, the magazine has become just another mouthpiece for big government.
     For the American government, prosecution, not persecution, offers the best chance of limiting the damage...  The blustering calls for the assassination of Julian Assange .... look both weak and repellent.   If Assange has broken American law, it is there that he should stand trial....  
    First of all, it's not clear that Julian Assange has broken any American law that has been held constitutional.   Secondly, a foreigner is not subject to another country's laws unless a foreigner commits a crime on another country's territory.   It's difficult to imagine the circumstances under which a foreigner who has been residing in foreign countries should be subject to American law.   Would China ever presume to put Americans on trial for breaking Chinese laws while they are living in the United States?   Is the Economist prepared to say that China should have that right?   Should the editors of the Economist, a London-based publisher, face prosecution if its editors have broken the laws, say, of Thailand?
    If America sticks to those standards now it will display a strength and sanity that contrasts with the shrill absolutism and cyber-vandalism of the WikiLeaks partisans.
    Sorry, there's no contest.  Calls for assassination are as shrill and absolutist as it gets.     At a time when people are calling for the assassination of a publisher, there is nothing "absolutist" about steadfastly defending him.   Cyber-vandalism?   The attacks that have blocked the WikiLeaks website represented the first, most damaging, and most massive act of cyber-vandalism since the first cable was released.  Why is the US government not investigating this cyber-vandalism?    

    WikiLeaks has published the cables in collaboration with the Guardian, New York Times, and other respected newspapers.    Unlike those publishers and many others organizations around the world from Reporters Without Borders to Human Rights Watch, the Economist lacks the strength, moral clarity, and sanity to defend freedom of the speech and a free press. 

    Cowards.

    Saturday, December 18, 2010

    Early WikiLeaks censors had ties to CitiGroup

    I began looking into the attacks on WikiLeaks back in April.   Since then I have found it interesting to examine the situation not only by focusing on particularly hostile institutions (CNN, the Pentagon, Amazon, etc.), but also with reference to influential individuals.  Today I want to focus on the decision makers at two organizations which led initial attacks on WikiLeaks after the first cables were made available. 

    Friday, December 17, 2010

    Leaks open up world’s corrupt governments

    Ralph Nader confronts neocon Gabriel Schoenfeld.  Thomas Blanton faces the camera. Photo by Jotman.

    Lately, the American air waves have been filled with speculation about how the release of the WikiLeaks cables will damage vital American interests.  At the recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on WikiLeaks, Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, urged American lawmakers “not to get fixated on whether WikiLeaks causes harm.” He said, “All speech causes harm.” As an example of this principle, Stone noted that the publication of the Pentagon Papers had meant that some government systems had to be changed.

    This obsession with harm is made worse when American leaders decry the impact of the release of the cables on various American institutions, rather than ask how the release will effect the ends towards which these institutions were established. This myopic perspective is magnified exponentially by the stenographic propensity of the mainstream American media. A Pew public opinion poll revealed that 60% of Americans believe that the WikiLeaks cables will likely “harm the public interest.” Back in August, in the wake of the Afghan war documents dump, only 47% thought WikiLeaks harmful.  (Interestingly, the two panelists at the hearing who pressed for legal action against WikiLeaks claimed that the Afghan war documents had been the more harmful.)

    It's abundantly clear that the “impact” of the release of cables on American foreign policy cannot be measured on the basis of the efficiency of sixty thousand State Department employees over the next eighteen months.   The cables are already having a political impact on the national politics of various countries around the world -- Turkey, South Korea, France,  Brazil, the list goes on.  

    “In the long run,” Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, told the House Judiciary Committee, “it is in the interest of US national security to have foreign governments more accountable.”

    Ralph Nader elaborated on this point. “I think we also have to consider the positive effects the leaks have had internationally. People in places like Kenya, Iceland, and Saudi Arabia -- among other countries -- have benefited from discovery of rampant corruption.” Ralph Nader said that by way of WikiLeaks, people in Saudi Arabia are for the first time coming to know their king’s position on various issues.   Elsewhere, other secretive ruling elites have been exposed.

    Given that openness and transparency have been shown to produce better governance, future historians are likely to view the leaks quite favorably.

    Panel says problem isn't WikiLeaks, but over-classification

    Testifying on WikiLeaks:  Abbe Lowell (left), Ralph Nader (center), and Thomas Blanton (right).  

    Today, on a snowy Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., Jotman observed the House Judiciary Committee hearing on “the Espionage Act and the Legal and Constitutional Issues Raised by WikiLeaks.”  A common thread ran through the discussion.  Seven panelists and several Congressmen spoke at length about an urgent problem confronting the United States, one that must be addressed.   And it wasn’t WikiLeaks.

    Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt set the tone: “I view this hearing in a larger context.   This is a moment in history when there is too much classification.  We have to examine our classification procedures. There is far too much classification within the executive branch and that puts democracy at risk.  Throughout history we can see that secrecy is a trademark of totalitarianism; openness the hallmark of democracy.”

    Gabriel Schoenfeld of the Hudson Institute, a neoconservative think tank, stated outright, “There is too much over-classification.”

     “The real problem is not too little secrecy, but too much,” said House Justice Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr..   “Over-classification” he continued, “means many foreign service officers need access to classified material, so it’s hard to protect any of it.  Instead of low fences around vast fields we need to build high fences around graveyards.” 
     
    Thomas Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, said “I would estimate that between 50% and 90% of government documents are over-classified.”   Blanton added, “Tom Cain, chair of the 9/11 Commission said that 75% of classified material they had seen should not have been classified. The 9/11 Commission found that more openness would have made us more secure.”   Blanton concluded that “the government has a responsibility to share information with the American people.”

    Ralph Nader said over-classification impeded the operation of government -- Congress in particular.  Nader said, “Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a book in which he explained that Congress has been repeatedly prevented from getting the information it needs to do its job.  Deprivation of information weakens the most powerful branch of government.”   Nader said “the benefits of disclosure vastly outweigh the disadvantages.”  Nader cited examples where more disclosure of information could have prevented wars.  His list included the Spanish American War, World War II, the Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnam War), and the Iraq War.   Nader said, “The suppression of information has led to more loss of life than WikiLeaks.  One million Iraqi lives, five thousand US servicemen, hundreds of thousands of injured Americans.”

    Prior to the hearing, Jotman had not realized that a US Congressman typically has no more   access to classified information than an ordinary American citizen.    Thomas Blanton explained that “Only the chairs of committees have the right to see confidential documents.  Other committee members are treated like the general public.”

    Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee said, “I’m concerned that if we freeze down on WikiLeaks, we are freezing down on information that could help us win the War on Terror.”    Responding to a question from Congresswoman Lee, Ralph Nader affirmed that it's important to acknowledge "how disclosures can help national security.”

    Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago Law School professor, put it bluntly.  “The starting point should be reforming the process and standards of classifications. We’ve run amok with secrecy.”
    __
    Members of the hearing raised several other interesting points, which I'll describe shortly in another post.   For some background and an introduction to today's hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, see this post.

    Thursday, December 16, 2010

    House Judiciary Committee hearing on WikiLeaks, Espionage Act, and First Amendment

    SEE UPDATE
    "(The Justice) department appeared to be attracted to the possibility of prosecuting Mr. Assange as a co-conspirator to the leaking because it is under intense pressure to make an example of him...." (NY Times)  Map of Press Freedom (Reporters Without Borders 2007)

    A committee of the US House of Representatives will hold a hearing on WikiLeaks on Thurday.  The first Congressional hearing on Wikileaks could be the last of its kind.  In January the Republicans take control of House committees.   With the US government itching to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, mainstream media outlets doing their best to smear WikiLeaks (here, here, here),  and -- not surprisingly given the media coverage -- US public opinion turning against the online publisher (chart) the stakes are high.   

    As of December 16, here is a list of recent legislative and judicial threats to the First Amendment (freedom of speech, a free press) originating from United States lawmakers:
    1. Last week, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said he had just authorized investigators to take 'significant' steps against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange,  declining to specify them.  (NY Times)
    2. "Julian Assange's British attorney, Mark Stephens, said Monday a secret US grand jury had been set up in Virginia, just outside Washington, to work on charges that could be filed against the WikiLeaks founder. (AFP)
    3. Thursday the NY Times reported that "Federal prosecutors... are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.  Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them."  The advantage of this approach, explains the Times, is that that the government could prosecute WikiLeaks for a crime that would not also implicate the newspapers.  (NY Times)
    4. "Lieberman ... joined his colleagues in introducing a bill dubbed the SHIELD Act in both chambers." (Hill)  Specifically, the SHIELD Act,  S.4004, is a "A bill to amend section 798 of title 18, United States Code, to provide penalties for disclosure of classified information related to certain intelligence activities and for other purposes."  
    In addition to strictly legislative or judicial action, lawmakers have exerted pressure on companies and media organizations.   This brings us to Thurday's hearings.   The Hill reports:
    The House Judiciary Committee has released the witness list for Thursday's hearing on "the Espionage Act and the Legal and Constitutional Issues Raised by WikiLeaks," which features former Green Party presidential candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.
    Looking at the House Judiciary Committee website, it's clear that this committee, under the leadership of Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D) has probably done at least as much as any organ of the federal government to advance civil liberties (that's not saying much, of course).  Not only has the committee held hearings on torture and the establishment of "black sites" under President Bush, Chairman Conyers has voiced strong criticism of the Obama Administration's record on civil rights, noting "progress has been not nearly enough, and ... positives steps are in many ways undermined by other disappointments."

    One question on the minds of civil libertarians is whether any US Congressmen will stand up for the First Amendment at Thusday's hearing by denouncing calls to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks.  So far on Capitol Hill, only Congressman Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican, has been outspoken in defense of WikiLeaks.   Many others have threatened it:
    The same day of Assange's arrest Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) penned an op-ed arguing WikiLeaks had violated the Espionage Act by possessing or transmitting information that could endanger national security. The Act also makes it a felony not to return such information to the federal government. Feinstein's stance was echoed by Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)
    I've heard that the hearing will mark the first time in years that Ralph Nader -- once a force on Capital Hill -- has been invited to give testimony.   The original Hill article continues:
    The panel is composed mainly of legal scholars and attorneys who may be able to discuss the implications of prosecuting WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange for publishing classified diplomatic cables and other materials leaked to the organization.

    Free-speech advocates fear the same legal arguments could be used to prosecute news organizations that publish information in defiance of the government.

    The Obama administration has responded by arguing WikiLeaks is not a journalistic organization and doesn't merit the same protections as traditional media organizations. The government has also reportedly pressured companies to cut off their business relationships with WikiLeaks.
    Here's a list of speakers invited to the committee hearing (with comments):
    • Abbe Lowell, partner at McDermott, Will and Emery.
    • Geoffrey Stone, professor of law and former dean, University of Chicago Law School.
    • Thomas Blanton, director, National Security Archive, George Washington University.
    • Kenneth Wainstein, partner at O’Melveny and Myers (Wainstein was appointed Homeland Security Advisor by President George W. Bush on March 30, 2008).
    • Gabriel Schoenfeld, Hudson Institute (From 1994 to 2008 served as senior editor of the neoconservative magazine Commentary).
    • Steve Vladeck, professor of law, American University (was interviewed about WikiLeaks here, Vladeck spoke at a previous hearing on the Espionage Act, presenting this paper).
    • Ralph Nader, legal advocate and author (An Unreasonable Man).

    UPDATE: Jotman's first report on Thurs. the House Judiciary Committee Hearing.

    Evidence the incarceration of Bradley Manning is torture

    Is 23 year-old Bradley Manning, not convicted of any crime, being tortured by the US government?

    Glenn Greenwald describes the incarceration of Bradley Manning, a dual citizen of the US and UK who is a whistle-blower and the presumed leaker of most of the material that WikiLeaks released in 2010:
    From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement.  For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell.  Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions.  For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch)...

    In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado:  all without so much as having been convicted of anything.  And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.
    Is Bradley Manning being tortured?  This is how I see it:   if the administration of drugs would routinely be considered necessary under the circumstances of Manning's confinement, then the prisoner is quite clearly being tortured.

    Administering drugs in attempt to shift the threshold of human endurance is not legal in sports. Likewise, it should not be legal when it comes to incarceration. I think any medical personnel  associated with drugging prisoners in order that they may withstand higher thresholds of physical or mental deprivation than would otherwise tend to be endurable are engaged in something unethical that must surely be illegal. I believe that such medical professionals are accomplices to torture. 

    Otherwise, the Western legal system crumbles.   States could justify various torture techniques on the basis that a drugged and abused prisoner did not experience much pain.   Or the government might administer an otherwise "cruel and unusual punishment," justified on the basis that a convicted man "didn't feel anything" (so the punishment wasn't cruel).   To conserve prison space,  the state might decide that it's convenient to administer drugs that render inmates comatose (easier to store them that way).   Look at what appears to have already happened to Bradley Manning -- who hasn't even been convicted of anything --and none of these scenarios is particularly far-fetched.
     
    In addition to the Obama administration, medical personnel at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia must be held to account for the conditions of Bradley Manning's incarceration.
    To donate to Manning's legal defense fund, visit the Bradley Manning Support Network.

    Monday, December 13, 2010

    Jotman's Fox News Award goes to CNN for its coverage of WikiLeaks

    CNN says Bonnie and Clyde once inspired fans for the same reasons Assange motivates supporters today.

    This week, Jotman's Fox News Award* goes to CNN for its coverage of Julian Assange and  WikiLeaks.

    It would appear that CNN had it in for WikiLeaks ever since the organization entered the national spotlight back in April.  That's when I posted my first blog reports (here and here) on CNN's atrocious coverage of WikiLeaks.   Well, CNN is still at it.  

    A CNN story about WikiLeaks shown Sunday was interesting on two counts.  First, the broadcast was not only a brazen hit-job on WikiLeaks founder Julian Asasnge, it also attempted to portray his supporters as naive nitwits.  For the purpose of reviewing it here, I transcribed a portion of the segment.  Susan Candiotti, CNN's national political correspondent, began:
    For fans of WikiLeak's Julian Assange, his arrest has made him even more of a cult hero....  A pro-Assange rally in NY is one of many being held around the world. Applauding him for leaking classified government documents, some fans are avenging his treatment, attacking the websites of MasterCard and Visa who they blame for cutting off his financing....   
    It's a fact that Visa, MasterCard and PayPal decided to cut funding for WikiLeaks, depriving the organization of of financing while WikiLeaks was trying to raise money for its legal defense.   The banks' withdrawal of essential financial services coincided with a massive and illegal DoS attack against WikiLeaks.    Susan Candiotti continued:
    A former FBI profiler says that for some Assange is a modern day hero... Routing for the notorious is nothing new.   At first real life bank-robbers Bonnie and Clyde captivated the public and Hollywood glamarized the crime spree... But the fan based dried-up when robbery victims started dying.  The so-called Barefoot Bandit created a fan base without killing anybody... Fugitive John Robert Boon could pass for Santa Clause is a legendary Kentucky pot farmer.  Authorities say supporters won't give him up and have sold "run Johnny run" T-shirts.
    Assange's peer group is a pair of bank-robbers who killed nine police officers, a kid who burglarized 100 homes, and a fugitive pot farmer.   Clearly Assange is guilty by association.    Susan Candiotti's message couldn't be more clear:  Jullian Assange, who has been charged with no crime, and according to most legal experts has broken no US law,  is to be counted among history's most notorious criminals.  (Fed this kind of nonsense by the mainstream news media, is it any wonder that Americans have begun to fear WikiLeaks?)   Candiotti concludes her segment by denigrating supporters of WikiLeaks, going so far as to imply that they are obstructing justice:
    "This is just a variation on rooting for the underdog, this is just a twist on that." (expert) A fan base can boost an ego or provide encouragement, but it can also get in the way of trying to stop someone accused of breaking the law." Susan Candiotti, CNN, New York.
    In Susan Candiotti's CNN report, supporters of WikiLeaks are Assange "fans."  There's no suggestion by CNN's Candiotti that WikiLeaks supporters are motivated by anything more than a desire to "root for the underdog."  Candiotti did not bother to inform CNN viewers that many WikiLeaks supporters are motivated by the very principles on which the United States was founded;  that among the values that have led people from all over the world to support Assange and WikiLeaks are free speech, belief in the Constitution, net neutrality, human rights, openness and transparency in governance, press freedom, protection of whistle-blowers, and journalistic ethics.

    In case any doubts remained in the minds of viewers, in the tradition of Pravda and the People's Daily,  CNN anchor Don Lemon then announced the government's position:
    In spite of public protest it is clear many leaders in American government think the founders of WikiLeaks is a criminal.   "I hope the justice department will soon indite him and that we will be able to extradite him from the United Kindom and bring him to stand trial in the United States." (Joseph Lieberman) "I think that the release of this information has put at risk American national security."  (Attorney General Eric Holder)
    Not quoted by CNN was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who told reporters, "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."

    I said the report was interesting for two reasons.  The second reason?  The interview exchange that followed between Don Lemon and former CIA operative Ray McGovern.   That's when viewers were witness to the bizarre spectacle of a former intelligence agency man lecturing a CNN journalist about journalistic ethics.    This part of the broadcast (from the 3 minute mark) has to be seen to be believed:



    ____
    *The Fox News Award is a feature at Jotman.com that began early 2008. It goes to a media organization that has gone the extra mile during the course of the week to make the public more stupid. (Otherwise corrupting the ethic of creativity and global citizenship.)  Some past winners

    Soccer riots in Moscow? Blogger reports call media into question

    Surveying Western media reports of the deadly riots in downtown Moscow Saturday, I'm struck by the fact that 1) you could count on one hand the number of Western media outlets that covered the events; 2) the few Western news organizations that bothered to report the story emphasized "football."

    All these headlines are misleading at best:
    Russian bloggers who were there live, shooting video, tweeting, and blogging, described a terrible series of events that had almost nothing to do with the sport of football.

    Sunday, December 12, 2010

    Ilya Varlamov's account of a race riot in Moscow

    Photo by Ilya Varlamov shows "Muscovite preparing for the Olympics in Sochi."

    Race riots shook Moscow Saturday, leaving 1 or 2 dead and many more injured.  We have just posted a translation of blogger Ilya Varlamov's account of the riots, along with several disturbing videos.   Ilya's day at the demonstration began quietly enough:
     This morning Kronstadt Blvd. in Moscow was closed. Thousands of people in a procession came to a halt near the spot where their comrade Yegor Sviridov had died.   Sviridov had been killed in a brawl that took place here on the night of December 6th. Groups of fans continuously replaced each other. All was quiet. There were no slogans, no flags, no disputes with the police.
    But within a few hours, all hell had broken loose.   Here's but one passage from Yarlamov's shocking account:
    "I can not forget old Uzbek man in the subway.  He was not beaten, he just sat in a corner shaking and crying, but looked as beat up as the others. "
    A picture of a rioter holding a metal pole is captioned:
    "Muscovite preparing for the Olympics in Sochi."
    The riots come as Russia prepares to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, a city located on the shore of the Black Sea beneath the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus Mountains.    In Moscow today demonstrators denounced the Caucasians (the Russian term for people from the Caucasus region) before beating them up.    It is a tragic commentary on the state of Russia that the people of Sochi -- and various minority regions -- feel completely unwelcome in the capital city of their own country.    How long can such a civilization endure?

    Complete coverage of the race riots in Moscow at THERE LIVE.

    Friday, December 10, 2010

    Taiwan news report on WikiLeaks

    I enjoyed watching this news report from Taiwan.   Unfortunately it reinforces the notion that WikiLeaks simply  dumped thousands of state department cables onto the Internet -- a demonstratively false assertion, yet one which has been repeated in various US news media reports

    But at least in this instance, the distortion has serious entertainment value:

    Thursday, December 9, 2010

    Daniel Ellsberg on WikiLeaks, the Pentagon Papers, and the corruption of the press


    The excerpt below is taken from a news release put out by the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-signed by Daniel Ellsberg, the former United States military analyst who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers:
    ...Ellsberg strongly rejects the mantra “Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad.” He continues: “That’s just a cover for people who don’t want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”

    ... with the Pentagon PR man Geoff Morrell and even Attorney General Eric Holder making thinly disguised threats of extrajudicial steps, Assange may be in personal danger.
    The media: again, the media is key. No one has said it better than Monseñor Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago warned, “The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy.” Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today.
    The big question is not whether Americans can “handle the truth.” We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions — an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, most of which have mounted a hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.
    So far, the question of whether Americans can “handle the truth” has been an academic rather than an experience-based one, because Americans have had very little access to the truth. Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, “ground truth.”

    Tuesday, December 7, 2010

    MasterCard blocks WikiLeaks donations - Part II

     MasterCard defends the political establishment by blocking WikiLeaks.  

    Monday, MasterCard let it be known that it wants to tell us where our money can go. The world's number  two credit card company has decided to prevent anyone from using MasterCard to donate to WikiLeaks. As I discussed in the previous post, this decision was justified by a totally unsubstantiated assertion (that WikiLeaks had done something illegal).  I explained that such moves could seriously impede WikiLeaks' ability to defend itself, should governments take WikiLeaks to court.   But MasterCard's action Monday was also an attack on you and me; it was a cynical assault on our free speech rights.

    The level of hypocrisy here is breathtaking.  I did some digging around and discovered that MasterCard has pet causes of its own, highly political "projects" that are no less controversial than WikiLeaks.

    For favorable legislation, there's MasterCard.  

    According to Open Secrets, between 1998 and 2009 MasterCard spent about $20 million dollars exercising free speech, funding a small army of lobbyists.   This spending came at a cost to society.   By 2009, largely as a result of lobbying by MasterCard and the banks, Americans had very few rights as credit card holders, as financial consumers.   The financial crisis that had broken out the previous year could largely be attributed to lobbying by financial institutions such as MasterCard.   A milestone along the path to financial catastrophe had been the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (which had been enacted to prevent another depression).   The passage of the repeal bill had been anticipated by a record year of lobbying by MasterCard.   

    This year in a landmark ruling, the US Supreme Court affirmed that all Americans -- people and so-called corporate persons -- have the right to free speech.  The court ruled that the act of donating money to a political cause qualifies as protected free speech under the First Amendment.  In 2010 MasterCard, already one of the top spenders on lobbyists, increased its donations to lobbyists by 25%.   So far this year, MasterCard has spent almost $4 million ($3,990,000.00 to be exact) lobbying Congress.   Moreover, this year banking lobbyists filed more reports of lobbying activity for MasterCard than for any other financial institution.

    Robert W. Selander, MasterCard's former CEO, retired in April 2010.  The NY Times reported on his pay over the course of nine years of intensive federal government lobbying by MasterCard, lobbying which culminating in the financial crisis of 2008:
    Mr. Selander, 59, is retiring from MasterCard with a pile of cash. He took home more than $149 million over the last nine years in salary, bonuses and stock he cashed out, according to an analysis of corporate filings conducted by Equilar, a compensation research business. He also has a pension worth $3.7 million and an additional $33.3 million in stock and options.
    Selander still sits on the board.  In April 2010, Ajay Banga became MasterCard's new CEO.  The previous year, when Americans were losing jobs in vast numbers and houses were being shuttered, Banga had brought home $13.5 million working for Citygroup.   This payment included "a large sign-on bonus" and a stock award to make up for compensation he was "giving up" by leaving Citigroup.   As you may know, over the course of the financial crisis, Citygroup, Banga's former employer, received $45 billion in TARP bail-out funds (a gift from America's political establishment to the banks, paid for by taxpayers).

    So far during Banga's short tenure as CEO of MasterCard, the company has jacked-up MaserCard's lobbying efforts by at least 25%, whilst banning cardholders from donating to WikiLeaks.   This much is certain: Banga heads a corporation that sees fit to spend freely on the political causes it favors, whilst restricting the ability of citizens to use their own money to have a voice.  First the banks took our money, now they've come for our liberty.  

    MasterCard declares war on WikiLeaks

    Photo by Squeaky Marmot.
    CNET
    "MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," a spokesman for MasterCard Worldwide said today.

    That further limits the revenue sources for WikiLeaks, which has seen its finances systematically attacked in the last few days, as the Swiss authorities shut down a bank account used by editor Julian Assange, and PayPal permanently restricted the account used by the group. WikiLeaks has responded with an increasing number of fund-raising requests that urge supporters to "KEEP US STRONG."

    Assuming that MasterCard blocks payments, the only easy way to donate electronically would be with a Visa credit card through a Web page hosted by Iceland-based DataCell.com [here's a link to donate]. Representatives of Visa did not respond to requests for comment from CNET today. (WikiLeaks also solicits payments sent through the U.S. mail.)

    MasterCard said it was cutting off payments because WikiLeaks is engaging in illegal activity. "MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal," spokesman Chris Monteiro said.
    "Illegal activity." Says who?   In the countries of Europe and North America, courts of law, not politicians or credit card companies decide if laws have been broken.  Neither Julian Assange nor WikiLeaks has been convicted of a crime in any court of law.   Legal experts say the legal case against WikiLeaks is weak.

    Moreover, this action by MasterCard comes as WikiLeaks is attempting to raise money for the legal defense of Julian Assange. How is Assange supposed to defend himself against the US government -- and sooner or later Wall Street banks -- if he is deprived of the means to raise money for his legal defense?

    MasterCard's behavior is not only an assault on justice, but free speech rights.  When citizens are not free to support a cause with their credit cards or checkbooks, voices are silenced.   Affirming this principle, the Supreme Court of the United States recently ruled that donations are a form of protected free speech.

    MasterCard must pay a hefty price for its assault on our liberties.

    UPDATEPart II is now posted.

    Why was WikiLeaks not a trending topic on Twitter?

     Trending topics onTwitter, worldwide (Bubbloy)
    Twitter has a credibility problem.  WikiLeaks has been the top news story in the world, but the organization has only rarely been designated a trending topic on Twitter's "trending topics" panel.
      The convenient explanation is that the data -- WikiLeaks-related  tweets -- simply don't fit the trending topics algorithm.  At least two bloggers have seriously considered this question.   Neither can make sense as to why neither WikiLeaks -- nor  topics related to WikiLeaks have been designated "trending topics" on Twitter.  

      Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing, writes at Student Activism blog:
      But no. That’s not the weird part. This is the weird part.
      This chart tracks Sundays and Wikileaks over the last 180 days, with each term’s volume drawn to scale. The red spires? Wikileaks. The blue dust at the base of those spires? Sundays. The tiny blue uptick in the lower left hand corner of the chart has had Sundays trending for more than twelve hours today, while Wikileaks has been completely dark since August.
      What the hell is going on here?
      As I said in my last two posts, I don’t care that much about trending topics lists. I’m a big believer in online organizing, but I just don’t think getting your cause to trend is all that important in the grand scheme of things. But this, like I say, is ridiculous.
      Update | Twitter staffer Josh Elman responds...
      Is Twitter interested in getting to the bottom of the WikiLeaks trending question?  Josh Elman, the Twitter staffer, wrote "We are constantly reviewing the trends algorithms but not in particular response to this question...."   Elman continued, “There’s no perfect answer here, just that the algorithm is doing what it’s always done, and for whatever reasons wikileaks isn’t rising above to become a top 10 trend.”     

      It seems that "whatever reasons" isn't a sufficient explanation for many social media watchers.  Another blogger, Bubbloy of Safety First, followed up on the investigations of Activist Student, examining more charts.   Bubbloy concluded:
      The only plausible scenario I can imagine where #Wikileaks does not trend in the top 10 with that sort of behavior is if the other members of the top 10 exhibit even more astounding rises and falls. However, that doesn’t seem to be what’s happened.
       Therefore, I am forced to a similar conclusion as Student Activist. It might well be that #Wikileaks is failing to trend simply because of the algorithm failing to pick it up for whatever reason. However, I must say, that would imply that Twitter has written perhaps one of the most abysmal Trend Identification algorithms it could have possibly written. If the goal of the algorithm was to pick up events of importance, popularity or any other meaningful social metric, Twitter would have failed miserably in this aim, and would truly start looking into developing a new one.
      What's going on here?    I can see two likely explanations for the problem.  The one that everyone fears -- outright human manipulation of the trending topics to serve a political agenda -- may well be the less depressing of the two.

      The grounds for suspecting Twitter might be suppressing promotion of WikiLeaks is quite strong.  During the Iranian election of 2009, Twitter postponed scheduled maintenance of its website at the request of the State Department.    Of course, the State Department portrays itself as the major victim of the ongoing WikiLeaks cables leak.

      Are we to believe the State Department is willing to pick up the phone to help the Iranians, but not to salvage its own reputation? 

      What about Twitter?  These days, the US government is tight with corporate America -- media companies in particular.    Twitter could still be the next Google.  For any number of reasons,  Twitter might not want to have a messy or complicated relationship with the Obama Administration.   Nor does any big technology or media  company.  We saw that Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off its servers last week, seemingly at the behest of Senator Joseph Lieberman who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.   Also at the behest of the senator, Tableau, another Seattle-based tech company, pulled its WikiLeaks charts

      These days, if senior government officials want a favor from business, it probably only takes a phone call.  Perhaps not even that.  Even in good times, companies don't want to risk attracting unwanted attention from government regulators or politicians.  Particularly when the domestic economy is sluggish, few companies will risk alienating the potential client with the deepest pockets: the federal government of the United States. 

      Yet, the most likely explanation -- "the algorithms did it!" -- could be even more disturbing in so far as it speaks to the future of social media more generally.   Let's put ourselves in the seat of a Twitter executive, looking to take the company through its multi-billion dollar future IPO and beyond:    What would make Twitter more attractive commercially: a trending topics algorithm that will A) highlight rising fads related to regional product, service, and entertainment preferences, or B) one designed to reflect important global trends concerning politics, the environment, and the economy?

      Social media site executives likely imagine that social media will be profitable to the extent they create communities of consumption.   As a consequence, mainstream media values may well be dictating the way Twitter programs its software to behave.  In other words, Twitter may already be a slave to a commercial paradigm where human political values are deemed to have little, if any, market value.  Other, longstanding ideas about community that don't fit this box are unlikely to be prominently reflected in the architecture of Twitter or any other social media site.      

      Although television and radio stations are expected to provide public interest programming such as news, social media sites like Twitter have no similar obligations to provide access to public-interest content.   This arrangement has to change.   Twitter ought to feel obliged to display links to popular topics concerning news and various public interest issues. 

      If the market has its way, the future of social media will be about reinforcing the habits of global consumers at the expense of issues that really matter to us as global citizens.

      Sunday, December 5, 2010

      Reporters Without Borders statement on WikiLeaks


      Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international press freedom organization, has issued a statement describing recent attempts by the governments of France and the United States to block WikiLeaks. Their statement includes this observation:
      Earlier this week, after the publishing several hundred of the 250.000 cables it says it has in its possession, WikiLeaks had to move its site from its servers in Sweden to servers in the United States controlled by online retailer Amazon. Amazon quickly came under pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and its chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman, in particular.

      After being ousted from Amazon, WikiLeaks found a refuge for part of its content with the French Internet company OVH. But French digital economy minister Eric Besson today said the French government was looking at ways to ban hosting of the site. WikiLeaks was also recently dropped by its domain name provider EveryDNS. Meanwhile, several countries well known for for their disregard of freedom of expression and information, including Thailand and China, have blocked access to cablegate.wikileaks.org.

      This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China. We point out that in France and the United States, it is up to the courts, not politicians, to decide whether or not a website should be closed. 
      WikiLeaks' website has gone down from time to time, having been under heavy attack.  Fortunately, you can still access everything, all you have to do make your way to a  WikiLeaks mirror

      Wednesday, December 1, 2010

      What might Julian Assange, Scott Ritter, and Eliot Spitzer have in common?

      Glenn Greenwald reflects on the timing 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 -- as John Cole notes-- 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.
      Back in August, Fabius Maximus did an admirable job of piecing together accounts of the various claims that Swedish women had made against the WikiLeaks founder.

      WikiLeaks and the mystery of the Wrangel Island cables

      Wrangel Island - US NOAA photo

      Is the United States government preparing to save the inhabitants of Wrangel Island from Russian domination?  It looks like we can't rule that out until WikiLeaks releases some more cables.

      Wikipedia:
      Wrangel Island belongs administratively to the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation. This rocky island has a weather station and two permanent Chukchi fishing settlements on the southern side of the island...

      According to some US individuals, including the group State Department Watch,  eight Arctic islands currently controlled by Russia, including Wrangel Island, are claimed by the United States. However, according to the United States Department of State no such claim exists. The USSR/USA Maritime Boundary Treaty, which has yet to be approved by the Russian Duma, does not address the status of these islands.

      However, it was revealed that the island was one of the most frequently-addressed areas in State Department Wikileaks Cablegate leak.
      The last line is almost an understatement.   Seven thousand US State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks (6,999 cables, to be precise) are labeled with the topic "Wrangle Island." By contrast, "Afghanistan" was the topic of 7,095 cables.   The Wrangle Islands were the topic of as many cables as "Saudi Arabia," "Canada," and "Cuba" put together!

      Of course, we contacted Sanjuro, a frequent contributor to JOTMAN.COM who speaks fluent Russian,  about Wrangel Island.   Sanjuro responded:
      That's interesting, to say the least. Control of the Arctic territories is firmly embedded in the national psyche in Russia, and even the slightest mention of US claims would stir even the moderate nationalists like nothing before.  Perhaps the Russians feel that losing a significant territory in the Arctic could cause a domino effect - there are many other Arctic territories that Russia claims its own, but currently has little ability to protect. A practical fear that there's something afoot in the Arctic direction is one of the few things that could consolidate (if only for a while) this nation at loss.

      Not everybody knows where Wrangel Island is, but surely nearly everyone in Russia has heard of it. The Wrangels were a well-known Russified German aristocratic family, most of all famous for the White Russian general who tried to defend Crimea from the Red Army at the end of the Civil War (1920) - so basically, it's a household name. The Arctic exploration aspect of that famous family was recognized in the Soviet Union - there was a famous children's book "The Adventures of Captain Wrungel" (wrungel being contraption of vrun - liar, someone who makes up things (from v. vrat' to lie, to tell stories) , and the surname Wrangel most likely in reference to the other famous member of that family). Both the book and especially an animated series based on it were wildly popular in the late Soviet Union.

      The "Arctic exploration - Civil War" connection is very prominent in the Russian history and in the current discussion. Admiral Alexander Kolchak is the best known figure in that regard, and the theme was revived a couple of years ago when the Russian TV dramatized his life.

      If in the US, there was, for instance, an island off Alaska named after a famous American explorer and/or a Civil War hero, and it somehow became a matter of territorial dispute... - well you can imagine it
      As it happens, Wrangel Island was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- a designation that has been known to spark international conflict.