The Secret Life Of A SuperPower

Courtesy Of The BBC

The Return Of COINTELPRO

By TOM MCNAMARA
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

“Democracies die behind closed doors” – Judge Damon J. Keith

For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.

The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.

The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.

Or did it?

In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”

The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).

The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p. 61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”

Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.

On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year, even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.

We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which, according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to “the media, the general public or other personnel.”

In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found in their Greenwich Village apartment.

And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly. The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.

But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t “made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently reported in the New York Post’s version of events.

Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr. Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.”

As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.

The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.”

The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.

You know. The real terrorists.

Tom McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the ESC Rennes School of Business, France, and a Visiting Lecturer at the French National Military Academy at Saint-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France.

Sources

“COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens” Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Accessed at:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm

“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001. Accessed at:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/coinwcar3.htm

“FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), December 22, 2012. Accessed at:
http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post.   Accessed at:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN

“Manhattan Couple Stored Bomb-Making Items, Police Say” by Wendy Ruderman, December 31, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/nyregion/manhattan-couple-stored-bomb-making-items-police-say.html?_r=2&%29&

“More About FBI Spying” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), June 25, 2010. Accessed at:

http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-fbi-spying

“NYC couple arrested after explosive substance find” December 31, 2012, CBS/AP. Accessed at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57561371/nyc-couple-arrested-after-explosive-substance-find/

“Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” by Naomi Wolf, December 29, 2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation – Mission” The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed at:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/intelligence/mission

“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops” by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/village_bomber_planned_grade_blow_seiuSwWLlcAPyGvfDkPwDM

“Swedish (Government) Officials Working Under Orders Of CIA”

“Swedish (government) officials got the impression that they were working under direct orders of the CIA” – Mike Ölander’s reportage “CIA demanded that Sweden would expand cooperation”, Expressen, 6 December 2010

“The government – with Justice Minister Thomas Bodstrom as spearhead – is creating a society which in its extreme form makes the “1984” future dystopia to pallid away . . .”- Maria Rankka, Timbro Deputy Director, 2006. Foreword to Oscar Swartz’s book “Marching Towards The Bodström Society”

This article reviews a) Sweden’s traditional culture among its rulers of spying on their own citizens – also a political culture of “Neutral” Sweden consisting of dealing in secrecy with (and on behalf of) NATO powers in matters of Intelligence; b) the allegations about a systematic cooperation between the Social Democratic Party and the country’s Security Police, c) the juridical context of this  illegal violation of the citizens’ civil liberties and integrity – a context that has been characterised as “The Bodström Society”, and the veritable threat to those abusing powers represented by WikiLeaks and its founder and forerunner Julian Assange.

From that perspective, best way of keeping that threat as far away as possible, is to secure the arrest or seclusion of WikiLeaks’ sole and active forerunner Julian Assange as long as possible, and in “better” of cases, to keep him as incommunicado as possible. In the US, some top-ranking politicians and journalists have declared that the one and only optimum choice to solve “the problem” is to kill Assange. Just like that.

In this political context, and nowhere else, a true explanation for the so-called “Sweden VS Assange” case – better named the “Sweden against WikiLeaks” case – is to be found.

By Marcello Ferrada de Noli

In 2008 the Swedish Parliament approved the infamous Surveillance legislation - an Intelligence-gathering instrument aimed at monitoring in detail and registering all electronic communications of Swedish individuals [See Debating Sweden’s surveillance legislation: The FRA-lagen VS civil liberties]. The ferocious – and unusual – struggle opposed by Human Rights activists together with the Swedish Pirate Party and some members of other political organizations was in vein.

The government and its allies in Parliament motivated the new legislation on issues of Sweden’s national interest. However, only two years later, the WikiLeaks cables gave evidence that the US government had ordered the Surveillance-law (FRA-lagen) directly to the Swedish rulers. In actual fact, the beneficiaries of such legislation that sacrificed Swedes’ civil rights and personal integrity  all resulted from US-based entertainment companies to US Intelligence & enforcement agencies.

Author Oscar Swartz (picture at right) had anticipated it all in “Marching towards the Bodström Society” (Marcshen mot Bodsträmsamhället). “Bodström Society” [Bodströmsamhället in Swedish] is a term coined by Swartz ca 2005, denoting an Orwellian-like development in the Swedish society that Swartz – and many with him –  ascribes to regulation proposals or declarations by the reactionary former Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström (of the law-firm Bodström & Borgström). Bodström himself is ostensibly very proud of the epithet, and even adopted it as header for his blog he publishes from Virginia, U.S. (read 2011).

Almost concomitantly, other cables released by WikiLeaks exposed the secret agreements between high-ranking officials of the Swedish Ministry of Justice with CIA and FBI – with participation of the Swedish Foreign Office – with regard to the transference to the US of personal, political, and other private or sensitive information of Swedish citizens. The agreements was – again – conducted on the back of the Swedish Parliament [See This is Why].

 

Historically seen, we find a veritable inquisitorial culture among autocratic Swedish authorities, particularly in regard the registering of the citizens’ leftist political opinions.

Perhaps the most infamous (so far exposed) of such registers occurring prior the New Surveillance law of 2009 – was the “IB Register”. This was an Intelligence-gathering program kept by the Intelligence Services of Swedish Armed Forces. The revelations indicated, among others, that individuals with left-wing sympathies were systematicallymonitored and registered by the Swedish Armed Forces – in a period coinciding with the relatively strong public opposition to the Vietnam War. This surveillance and register of the leftist political opinions among populations was done “behind the back” of the Parliament t (See the IB affair).

It was also exposed in this context that Swedish Military (the IB-bureau), quote: ”co-operated extensively with the Central Intelligence Agency“ and also that Sweden sent spies abroad. This was of course mentioned in severe contrast with the publicized international Swedish “Neutrality”. At the time, the Swedish authorities responded to the IB-exposures with the arresting by the Swedish Security Police of whistle-blower Håkan Isacson (a former employee at the IB Office) and the authors of the disclosure, journalists Jan Gillou and Peter Bratt – and photographer Ove Holmqvist – in charges of espionage.  They were sentenced to one-year in prison each.

The allegations about a systematic cooperation between the Social Democratic Party and the country’s Security Police

One most striking revelation was that the Social Democratic Party, that has been in the government of Sweden for decades, was originally pivotal in the architecture of the above mentioned IB-Office. For it was also devised to espionage and register “communists” and other militants or left-wing sympathizers that the Social democrats would perceive as competitors in the so-called arbetarrörelsen (workers unions and similar organizations).

The joint operation between the Armed Forces Intelligence and the Social Democratic Party had begun long ago in the 50’s with an agreement signed by the Minister of DefenceTorsten Nilsson and the general secretary of the party Sven Andersson. The agreement was based in the fact that the Armed-Forces Intelligence would be using the listings kept by the social democrats (collected at the working places where the party had control of the unions).

The co-operation between the Swedish Security Police, which inherited the espionage activities of the former IB-Office, and the Social Democratic Party continued over the years. The journalists reported that the social democrats had their own Intelligence apparatus in close co-operation with the official Security Police. Palme and Sten Andersson flatly denied that. However, I can personally witness that such co-operation could have remained operative at least in 1977, four years after the IB affair:

There were approximately 25,000 Chileans exiles in Sweden in the years after the military coup of Augusto Pinochet of 1973.  In the spring of 1977, the Social Democratic Party official in charge of the Latin-American desk (or international relations) contacted Mario Espinoza (“Juancho”) – at that time in charge of the MIR-Exterior Office in Sweden

War on Terror. The author at the time of the 1977 events

[NOTE: MIR-Exterior was the international bureau of the MIR, Movement of the Revolutionary Left, operating abroad to support activities of the anti-Pinochet Resistance led by MIR in Chile. During that time the military governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, had formed an operative terrorist alliance called the “Operación Condor” (Operation Condor, aimed to liquidate oppositional figures in exile – several bloody executions took place in different countries - and counter arrest Resistance activities of the “Junta de Coordinación Revolucionaria” of South America’s Southern Cone, formed mainly by, MIR-Chile, ERP-Argentina, ELN-Bolivia, and the Tupamaros of Uruguay). Being the presence of MIR in Scandinavia the main among these organizations, MIR instituted in Sweden a counter-intelligence unit to fight Operación Condor activities in Scandinavia. I was designated to lead the unit].

Mario Espinoza and I went to the meeting with the social democrats, which took place in Sveavägen 68. In the meeting, the senior party official declared to us the following, “Our contacts in the Swedish Security Police informed that (Operation Condor) is to initiate activities for Northern Europe, from their current base in the Chilean Embassy in Madrid they may be sending more operatives here . . . We know also of the monitoring activities deployed in those regards by MIR . . . We therefore ask your organization to avoid any retaliating-action in Swedish territory, and also, for MIR’s own behalf, we ask you to synchronize your monitoring results with the one conducted on Operation Condor activities by the Swedish Security Police.

Mario Espinoza agreed with the proposal, and said, “The people working with it should get in contact with Ferrada-Noli who is in charge of our counter-intelligence unit”. One officer from the Swedish Security Police called me the same afternoon (the meeting with the social democrats at Sveavägen 68 was held 11.00 AM).

We wondered how it was that social democrats knew about our monitoring of the Junta agents and presumably operatives of Operation Condor. After all we worked with tight clandestine routines, encrypted communications, etc.; all members of my unit – and we were only few – were former combatants with long experience in undercover work and also survivors of Pinochet harsh prisoners camps (Quiriquina Island, Chacabuco, and Concepción). It was no task for “civilian” social democrats – or for that part not a possibility for any civil organization – that with normal means they would be able to get insight about our operations. The most credible, we reasoned from the beginning, is that the information was passed to the social democrats after a professional surveillance – technically superior – done by the Swedish Security Police. But again, how come it was the Social Democratic central bureau that contacted us? Why the high-ranking party official at 68 Sveavägen st. said explicitly “Our contacts in the Swedish Security Police informed . . .” ? Further, the Social Democratic Party it was not at that time in charge of the Government, it was not an “official” party – why they would enjoy official contacts with an official institution such as the National Security Police?

Some answers became clearer while doing the talks on behalf of my unit at the Security Police headquarters at the Kungsholmen compound. It is not that solely judging after the contact-episode above I would be in position to provethat some kind of communication pipes between the Security Police and the Social Democratic Party did exist systematically. Yet, my strong impression was – after the conferences and walks I had together with the gentlemanly senior official of the Security Police – that this was the case. That they did cooperate.

Photo above-left. The author standing outside the Court & Police building in Kungsholmen, Stockholm, 1977. Photo taken by one unit member and developed in our artesian lab.

The contacts lasted for about two months, until the situation was declared under control.Operación Condor in Scandinavia was namely neutralized and no political exile figure was killed in spite of the over 30,000 exiles from the corresponding Operation Condor countries living there at the time. However several assassinations occurred elsewhere.  During these activities I met several Swedish Security Police officers – outstanding professionals – including two senior-ranking officers. Incidentally one senior officer presented me fortuitously to Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin, while he was at the Security Police headquarters using a sport facility located in the building.

How prevalent, and how secret, is the espionage that the Swedish authorities exercise upon their citizens on behalf of the US? The role of WikiLeaks in disclosing abuses of power = The reason for Sweden’s Vendetta

To give an idea of the scope of such collaboration, I source a reportage done by prize-winner journalist Mikael Ölander, who interviewed several Swedish government officials working in the Intelligence front. The reportage was published in Expressen the 6 of December 2010 with the title “CIA demanded that Sweden would expand cooperation” [“CIA krävde att Sverige skulle utöka samarbetet”]:

Google translation of the original Swedish publication

In 2003, the CIA sent a new station manager to Stockholm. He would have been who, during a meeting in the Cabinet Office, put forward the stricter requirements for enhanced cooperation declared in the reportage. The requirements were met at the Ministry of Justice, which has the tuition for all police activities including the Secret Police or Security Police. And who was Minister of Justice in 2003? The very same social democrat politician Thomas Bodström.

The WikiLeaks diplomatic cables have indicated that the current Swedish government of Fredrik Reinfeldt has opted for keeping the Bodström-era U.S. Intelligence collaboration in the frame of “informal agreements”. Read, let us keep the agreement secret from the Parliament and the public. But as I wrote in my Second Opinion article Assange buried the Swedish neutrality myth (December 2010) “In truth, it was not the USA government and its envoys that wanted to deceive the Swedish Parliament. The Americans instead wished to have a formal and correct agreement. However, the even more pro American-benefit proposition (than the one from the Americans themselves) was all on the part of the Swedish government officials”

In fact, those “informal” agreements have placed the Swedish security and military intelligence so heavily under the control and command of the Americans, that, as reported by Ölander, referring to the years ensuing 2003, Sweden officials got the impression that they were working under direct orders of the CIA [“Under de kommande åren förändrades svensk underrättelse-och säkerhetstjänst på ett sådant sätt att enskilda tjänstemän uppfattade det som att de arbetade på direkt beställning av CIA”].

 And this is the context truly explaining the shameful episode in which Sweden delivered in secret one night at Bromma Airport, in the heart of Stockholm, the political prisoners to CIA operatives fir further transport in US aeroplane to Egypt – to be interrogated under torture. And this was done with the direct participation of the Ministry of Justice. At the time the Minister of Justice was Thomas Bodström; he was signalled by a close friend and working colleague of the late Foreign Minister Anna Lihnd as a central gestalt in the referred renditions flight operation.

In the context above denoting such pervasive and ubiquitous collaboration between the social democrats with both the National Police and the CIA, it is not at all strange that a hypotheses on a “CIA connection” and a “Police connection” linked to the social democratic “Bröderskap” (in which both Bodström and the Assange nominal accusers are prominent political figures) flourished as they did in the early explanations of the “case” of Sweden against the WikiLeaks founder.

 It is worth noting that political officials representing political parties in the government of Sweden do make all these decisions. Such decisions – unlike in other countries – are not taken by or at the initiative of officials at the Security Police. They are only to implement decisions coming from the respective ministries. Moreover, there are known occasions (and there might be also – for the public – unknown episodes) in which the Security Police have acted more independently from their American counterparts, or pursued further or explicit directives from the government authorities. That was the case in the Egyptians episode when a top chief of the Security Police insisted in having a clearance from the Ministry of Justice. For in the Swedish praxis these authorities are mainly the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Office, apart of the Central Government Office (Regeringskansliet).

The Central Government Office (Regeringskansliet)

The Head of the “America Section” at the Central Government Office, Maria Lundqvist (photo above), was apparently on of the first high-ranking officials that met the delegation representing the US government and US Intelligence establishment.

According to the evidence reviewed in the documentary at SvT “De hemliga telegrammen” [See down bellow], Ambassador Lundqvist warned the American delegation about Sweden having at the moment a “sensitive time”, politically speaking, regarding issues of Government surveillance and of personal integrity. She made also clear that  the matter (the collaboration with the US on Intelligence gathering of Swedish citizens) was “an issue to be negotiated only with the Ministry of Justice. The role of the Foreign Office was only to get informed on what the matter is about”.

The Foreign Office – Minister Carl Bildt

Carl Bildt was asked about this secret collaboration with the US Intelligence agencies and the issue of keeping the agreements away from Parliament’s insight. Bildt declared,

- That is done in the frame of existing legislation and regulations, and they are generally known (in Parliament).

[- “Det sker inom ramen för de lagar och bestämmelser som finns, och de är allmänt kända.”]

But what Bildt is referring to with “they are widely known in the Parliament” is the “existing legislation and regulations”. In his concrete answer Bildt is in confirming that the collaboration as such, or what the different collaboration agreements in concrete are about, is kept secret from the Parliament. And this is against the law.

My conclusion is that Carld Bildt is bluntly lying on this issue. And he is not the only minister to do so in the Reinfeldt government. As was equally true under the (for Sweden’s truly national interests) catastrophe government of the confessed pro-Bush admirer Göran Persson – and of his Justice Minister Thomas Bodström.

The Ministry of Justice – Minister Beatrice Ask

Google translation of the original Expressen article

There is (or there was – because is officially deleted from Internet) this remarkable research-journalistic documentary based on the WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables of 2010. The documentary – a chapter of the program Dokiment Inifrån – was headed “The secret cables” [De hemliga telegramen] and was aired December 2010. Professors blogghas found an online copy of the disappeared documentary. It is here below: Click on the image of Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask to see the video “The Secret Cables” (Swedish)

The Swedish Police, including the Security Police, are under the Ministry of Justice. The documentary clearly shows that a high-rank official at the Ministry of Justice, Anna-Carin Svensson (in charge at the Ministry of Police matters) asked the Americans to better keep the “cooperation” informal. This, as we said above, on the occasion that the US wished a formal, legal agreement, with their Swedish counterparts on matters of Intelligence cooperation.

However, the Minister of Justice Beatrice Asks – as her colleague Carl Bildt has done towards the press – denied bluntly in the referred documentary any knowledge of any “secret agreement” performed with the Americans by her Ministry. This, spite of the fact that the reporter confronted her with the leaked evidence. Minister Asks declined to comment. It is a most revealing documentary and a good piece of journalism. I wished I had the possibility to insert English texts in it!

The Swedish authorities’ culture of spying on their own citizens

Google translation of the original DN article

While I am writing this article – previously announced in the Introduction of my series Sweden VS Assange – Insider Analyses – I read in Dagens Nyheter (DN) of today  27 December that “Individuals’ ethnicity and religion are recorded illegally by the Swedish National Police” [Enskilda personers etnicitet och religion registreras på ett olagligt sätt av Rikspolisstyrelsen]. That is the conclusion reached by the Swedish Commission on Security and Integrity Protection whose spokesperson refers further investigation on the issue.

And just a week ago it was disclosed that the State-owned Swedish Radio register the political affiliation or political sympathies of Swedish listeners participating in the call-in program Ring P1!

Google translation of the original DN article

Now that Julian Assange has announced a massive release of information that would affect “every country”, Sweden’s rulers can with all right feel uncomfortable. But there is one certain way to impede or greatly obstruct the “disrupting” disclosures done or to be done by WikiLeaks.

From that perspective, best way of keeping that threat as far away as possible, is to secure the arrest or seclusion of WikiLeaks’ sole and active forerunner Julian Assange as long as possible, and in “better” of cases, to keep him as incommunicado as possible. In the US, some top-ranking politicians and journalists have declared that the one and only optimum choice to solve “the problem” is to kill Assange. Just like that.

Defend Julian Assange’s Human Rights. Defend his right to live and let us secure WikiLeaks enormous contribution to free information on behalf of true democracy.

Via: "Professors Blogg"

Terrorist

The U.S. military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States — the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency. 

Info via: "The Washington Times" 

Image by Party9999999
Via: "Deviant Art"

WikiLeaks: Top Secret Mobile Information Collection Unit

Posted by "Sayf Maslul"


"The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic." 
[Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Pentagon Papers Case, 1971.]

"The only effective restraint upon executive policy and power... may lie in an enlightened citizenry -- in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government." 
[Justice Potter Stewart, 1971.]

"In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell." [Justice Hugo Black, 1971.]

"I've heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer and so on,. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. ... Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest." 
[Bob Gates, US Defense Secretary, 2010.]

"The best justification governments can find to shut down information is that lives are at risk. In fact, lives have been at risk as a result of the silences and lies revealed in these leaks." [Jemima Khan, who provided surety to Julian Assange at his London hearing, 2010]

[Compiled by Joe Lauria, The Huffington Post]

Image: A WikiLeaks truck parked outside the Whitney Museum in New York City.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

Posted by guest blogger "Sayf Maslul"


"At last, it seems that one person has been able to make disunited governments unite in search of a common goal:

To fuck him and his organisation up as much as they can!"

[Unknown Author] 

Ethiopia's Bombs Itself, Blames Eritrea

A Case Of A Goverment Orchestrated Flase Flag Operation

By THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"



Recently released Wikileaks Ethiopia files expose how Ethiopian security forces planted 3 bombs that went off in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on September 16, 2006 and then blamed Eritrea and the Oromo resistance for the blasts in a case that raises serious questions about the claims made about the bombing attempt against the African Union summit earlier this year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In a report from 2006 marked “Secret ; Subject: Ethiopia: Recent Bombings Blamed on Oromos Possibly the Work of GOE [Government of Ethiopia]…by: Charge [d’Affairs] Vicki Huddleston”, “An embassy source, as well as clandestine reporting, suggests that the bombing may have in fact been the work of the GoE security forces.” Cable reference id: #06ADDISABABA2708

At the time the western media reported the Ethiopian National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) claims that the bombs were “part of a coordinated terror attack by the OLF [Oromo Liberation Front, the oldest national liberation movement in Ethiopia] and Sha’abiya (Eritrea) aimed at disrupting democratic development”.

The Wikileaks report goes on, “a typically reliable information source), contacted Post to report that” the bodies of three men found at the bomb sites were “men [who] had been picked up by police a week prior, kept in detention and tortured. He said police then left the men in a house and detonated explosives nearby, killing 3 of them.”

This exposes the history of how the Ethiopian regime has planted bombs and then blamed Eritrea and the Ethiopian resistance. The lies that make up the official version of this alleged terrorist attack raises serious questions about the credibility of the recently released report by the UN via its US State Department affiliate, the Monitoring Group for Eritrea and Somalia which blames the Eritreans and the OLF for the January bombing attempt at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Identical lies about a nearly identical “terrorist attack”, all accepted as fact by the western media. This should also deliver another body blow to the Obama White House and its claims that Eritrea supports terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

So once again the bellowing against Eritrea by the USA and it lackeys at the UN going back to 2006 is exposed as complete bunkum and an identical frame up of Eritrean and the Oromo resistance in Ethiopia that has been regurgitated by the UN and its truth challenged Monitoring Group on Eritrea and Somalia must be subject to a more critical scrutiny. Based on this expose’ it can only be hoped that the UN inSecurity Council, which has yet to decide whether to pass severe sanctions against Eritrea, will refrain from doing so.

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.

Revealing Information About US Citizens Living In West Bank

A Jewish settler holds Israeli flags as he protests in support of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank.


New WikiLeaks Cable Spotlights The Little-Examined Phenomenon Of Americans Moving To The West Bank

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT
WEDNESDAY, AUG 24, 2011 11:47 ET
Courtesy Of "Salon Magazine"

Wikileaks released several new tranches of State Department diplomatic cables today, primarily covering Middle Eastern countries.

There haven't yet been any major hard news stories generated from the release, but, as always, some of the most interesting cables are the reportorial snapshots of life in a given country.

In 2004 and 2005, consular officers at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv wrote a pair of fascinating cables about American citizens who are living in illegal West Bank settlements.

The officers found that the U.S. citizens' reasons for moving to Jewish settlements in the area where Palestinians hope to establish a state were three-fold: social, economic, and ideological.

In the first cable, a 36-year-old married mother of three -- at the embassy to report the birth of an American citizen child -- explained that she believed the "God-given land of Israel" includes the West Bank:

The American citizen is a 36 year-old married woman with three children. She immigrated to Israel from the US when she was about 20 years old. She is a stay-at- home mother, but her husband, a graduate of the Technion Institute (an elite Israeli technical university), works in Tel Aviv. She says Neve Tsuf is a settlement of about 200 families. It is located approximately six miles north of Ramallah and six miles east of the Green Line. The small Arab village of An Nabi Salih is little over half a mile north of the settlement.

As a resident of the West Bank she is technically within the consular district of the US Consulate in Jerusalem. However she said that she did not wish to travel through East Jerusalem streets "surrounded by Arabs" to get to the Consulate. She would go there only if accompanied by her husband, who is usually armed. When asked why, if she fears East Jerusalem, she is willing to live in a settlement in the heart of the West Bank, she said that she thinks of Neve Tsuf as a suburb of Tel Aviv.

She considers herself religious and cited ideological reasons, not financial incentives, for moving to Neve Tsuf. She believes that the God-given land of Israel includes the West Bank. However, she also cites practical reasons for wanting to live in a settlement. She says that, whereas within Israel she would live in an apartment, in Neve Tsuf she has a house. The proximity of her settlement to Tel Aviv is another important factor. She also cited the closeness of community life in Neve Tsuf, where she says people help each other.

In a 2005 cable, another American woman, the mother of five, describes moving to the West Bank two months prior, primarily because of her husbands ideology. Life in the settlements is also described as similar to the American Midwest:

The American citizen is the mother of five U.S. citizen children. Her husband is an Israeli. Two months ago, the family moved from Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Elkana. Elkana is located about four kilometers east of the Green Line and due east of Tel Aviv. She said the settlement has a population of about 750 families.

When asked why the family chose to move to a settlement at this time, she cited pragmatic reasons nearly identical to those cited by the subject of reftel A. She said the family could afford a large house with a yard in Elkana, whereas in Jerusalem, they could only afford a small apartment. Again, as did the subject of reftel A, she pointed approvingly to the close communal atmosphere of the settlement and cited the "quality people" of Elkana, most of whom, she said, are college graduates. (Comment: The observation that settlement residents are "nice" is a recurring one. One American citizen resident of the West Bank settlement Karnei Shomron compared these communities to small towns in the American mid-west.) ...

She denied having personal ideological reasons for moving to Elkana. Her husband, on the other hand, was primarily motivated by ideology. Her husband and children faithfully attend anti-disengagement protests and rallies. She said the Elkana schools provide the children with free busing to these events.

• Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More:Justin Elliott