Julian Assange - leaking in America and Sweden

The Assange story becomes more and more convoluted – with sex and lies making it difficult to focus on the real issues. So, in the true spirit of this blog,  let’s step back; get the story line; and then try to identify the issues.

Most recent writing on Assange focuses either on the sexual issues; on his wider political mission; or the diplomatic complications of his most recent refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. We need to pull all the issues together.

This post sets out some basic facts. The next one will focus on the ideological and political context in Sweden which has created such a maelstrom from an act which, in all countries other than Sweden it seems, would be regarded as a private misdemeanour.

• Wikileaks was founded in 2006 by Assange "to bring important news and information to the public... One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth." Another of the organisation's goals is to ensure that whistleblowers and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents. An online "drop box" was designed to "provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists."
• It has nothing to do with Wikipedia
• Wikileaks’s main data bases are in Sweden.
• in early 2010 Wikileaks began releasing cables which had been sent by 274 of the US consulates, embassies, and missions around the world. Dated between December 1966 and February 2010, the cables contain the diplomats' assessment of host countries and their officials. According to WikiLeaks, the 251,287 cables making Cablegate the world's largest release of classified material.  
• The first document, the so-called Reykjavik 13 cable, was released by WikiLeaks on 18 February 2010, and was followed by the release of State Department profiles of Icelandic politicians a month later. 
• WikiLeaks starts negotiations with media partners in Europe and the United States to publish the rest of the cables in redacted (edited) form, removing the names of sources and others in vulnerable positions.
• April 2010. Julian Assange visits Sweden to discuss an offer of protective co-operation from the Pirate Party, a political movement devoted to maximum freedom on the Internet. After only a brief existence, the upstart party had surprisingly won a place in the European Union Parliament, and had suggested that WikiLeaks would be safer from repressive measures if it were sponsored by a parliamentary party. It is just weeks after WikiLeaks astounded the world and severely damaged the image of the United States by issuing “Collateral Murder”, a military video documenting an appalling war crime by the seemingly inhuman crew of a U.S. helicopter gun ship in Iraq.
• In August 2010 Assange visited Sweden to formalise the deal with the Pilot Party. During this visit he spoke at a Conference arranged by the Social Democrats and had sex with two women one of whom was an SD supporter and who subsequently used a police friend to check what power they had to force Assange to take a medical test (since unprotected sex apparently took place).  The main instigator is horrified when the police say they will charge Assange with rape – and refuses to sign the interview sheet. A warrant for his arrest for rape is issued (but rescinded within a day by a higher authority on the basis that there is no case to answer) An SD politician fighting a difficult election gets the case opened up a few days later and leaks to the press (He has a legal partnership with an ex-Minister who allowed American rendition).  Assange waits in Sweden for 5 weeks for clarification; is told there are no charges against him; leaves the country on 27 September. That same day a warrant is issued for his arrest.
• On 28 November 2010, the first 220 cables were published by El País (Spain), Der Spiegel (Germany),Le Monde (France), The Guardian (United Kingdom) and The New York Times (United States). WikiLeaks had planned to release the rest over several months, and as of 11 January 2011, 2,017 had been published.
• The US government reacted angrily to these disclosures – and a Grand Jury is apparently in existence collecting information (with FBI help) for a prosecution.
• On 30 November 2010 Swedish Prosecutor Ny (the third to be involved in the case) issues a European Arrest Warrant for Assange and authorises an Interpol Red Notice concerning him. This is reserved for terrorists – but even Gaddafi was given only an Orange notice
• Assange uses every legal means to resist extradition to Sweden – fearing that their close cooperation with the USA will lead to his extradition to the USA where he has become a hate figure – with some politicians openly calling for his assassination.
• he spent almost 500 days in "protective custody" while fighting the case with the English legal system (this means with friends with an electronic tag on his ankle) 
• when he finally lost the battle to be extradited to Sweden, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London

Although I'm a fan of Scandinavian systems, the Swedish bureaucrats were exposed a decade ago for their eugenics programme which compulsorily sterilised more than 60,000 women from the 1940s through to the 1970s. In the late 1980s, I experienced personally the heavy-handed nature of their police when I tried to enter a night club with a Swedish Professor and his academic colleagues. More later.............................. 

tourists in Brasov

First two weeks of August overcast and cool – but the cloudless blue skies now encircle the Carpathian mountain ranges again. Saturday we acted as Brasov tourists – catching the funicular up the mountain which (a bit like Sofia) towers over the city; and then taking an open-air bus for a city trip. Well worth the 7 euros the afternoon cost (3 for the first; 1 for second; and 3 for parking). Clocked an excellent wine shop en route – offering well-presented wines from various parts of the country – and finished the day with a moving organ and soprano performance at Ghimbav’s fortified church. I’m not a great fan of classical solo singing but Cristina Radu’s voice had me spell-bound. Next Saturday evening sees the last of the Musica Barcensis performances at the most easterly of the fortified Saxon churches - in Rasnov. Brasov has about ten such fortified churches within a short distance - four of them in our neighbourhood. 

A visit to the Carturesti bookshop netted Sach Sitwell’s 1938 Romanian Journey whose intro could have been written yesterday (apart from the references to the royal family)

For Roumania is still unspoilt. Perhaps there is no other country in Europe of which this is true to the same extent. More than this, under good rule, it has limitless possibilities from its untired human stock, who have come safely through the nineteenth century in their pristine state (ie without industrialisation). Let us hope that there will never be a town in Roumania with a million inhabitants. Bucarest must be getting near that mark. For there is always misery in very large towns; and the good fortune of Roumania lies in its mountains and its plains. And this must bring us back, once more, to our general contention. What is permanent and unforgettable in Roumania is the great plain of Transylvania, the woods of Oltenia, the swamps of the Danube Delta, the valleys of the Neamt, painted Sucevita and Voronet, and the wooden houses and gay costumes seen upon its roads. That is the permanent Roumania; while the modern Roumania of factories and model flats is only its amelioration into twentieth century conditions of civilization. We prefer the old. And it is that which will last, tempered by the new.

an attractive book on the secluded (and old-world) Bukovina region by one of the country’s best-known photographers (Florin Andreescu) was also bought; and some autobiographical musings by Norman Manea who got out of Romania in the 1980s and has an interesting foreward to this 2000 book Romania since 1989

3 DVDs of the magnificent old Romanian conductor Celibidache – playing Bruckner with whom he was great friends - completed the purchases. It's said that noone understood his music better.

Rule of Law

In commenting on the Pussy Riot “witchtrial” in Moscow, I broke my general rule not to comment on ongoing events. My blood boiled, however, as I read the live coverage yesterday of the judge’s justification of the two-year sentence she inflicted on the band’s young members for their brief act of defiance in a Moscow church earlier this year. “Conspiracy driven by hatred of religion” indeed! Judges (and priests) in so many of the countries in which I have lived in the past 22 years are so illiterate and craven that they probably cannot even begin to understand the meaning of civil disobedience (see the late 1990s book - Why Angels Fall).

Amidst all the rhetoric in the past 2 decades about democracy one thing is clear. Without the semblance of “rule of law” it is meaningless. That means a system in which the judiciary owes no favours to the political executive. And Russia and China have made it clear that such a system is not for them. I was, two years ago, tempted to China to head up a project which purported to advise the authorities on how to bring such a system into existence (along with lots of other fashionable things such as performance management). After 6 weeks I could see what a nonsense it was – and got out.

The only bright light here in Romania is the independent spirit being shown by prosecutors and judges – one of the probable reasons for the high-handed actions being taken by the new Prime Minister. Hopefully the genie will not go back in the bottle.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, European governments tear up what was left of “rule of law”. The UK, for example, is tearing up the Vienna Convention of 1961 which has allowed people to take refuge in foreign Embassies. This is an excerpt from an ex-British Ambassador’s post on the matter -

The UK government has decided – after immense pressure from the Obama administration – to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange. This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries – arguably millennia – of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.
The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty.

Article 22 - 

1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.

3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution. 

Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during the decades of the Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from each other’s embassies. This terrible breach of international law will result in British Embassies being subject to raids and harassment worldwide.The British Government bases its argument on domestic British legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot counter its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw from them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed on it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it – which would leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.

A European Tour

An absolutely brilliant travel blog which I’ve missed for the past couple of years as Merlin and Rebecca have traipsed around Europe – spending a couple of weeks in each country and posting superb photos of places and food, with recipes thrown in. They have only 6 of their 50 countries left to visit (if, that is you count UK as one – it is really 4). They were in Romania in June and have nice posts about the wooden churches of Maramures; a communist prison; and Romania’s national drink Tuica

Fighting for freedom

Some courageous and stirring words from the three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot currently being tried in Russia for their brief (and uninvited) performance in a Moscow Cathedral and who delivered closing arguments on Wednesday in a case seen as a key test of the Russian president's desire to crackdown on dissent. Let me reproduce the story almost in full - 

"This is a trial of the whole government system of Russia, which so likes to show its harshness toward the individual, its indifference to his honour and dignity," Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, one of the trio on trial said in an impassioned statement. "If this political system throws itself against three girls … it shows this political system is afraid of truth."
The judge set 17 August as the day she would deliver a verdict against the women, charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred following an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
Prosecutors have asked for a three-year sentence, arguing that the women sought to insult all of Russian Orthodoxy and denying they were carrying out a political protest.
"Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people," Tolokonnikova said, looking at the prosecution from inside the glass cage where she and her two bandmates, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, have spent the nine-day trial. "We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows."I am not scared of you," Alyokhina (24) told the court. "I'm not scared of lies and fiction, or the badly formed deception that is the verdict of this so-called court. Because my words will live, thanks to openness. When thousands of people will read and watch this, this freedom will grow with every caring person who listens to us in this country." Each woman ended her closing statement to loud applause from the Russian journalists sitting in the courtroom.

There are some aspects of this case I don't like - their performance was childishly offensive in its location and content; and the western media (and Madonna) fail to explore the question of how such pranks would have been treated in the west. But the fact remains that the cosying up of the Russian Orthodox church to Putin is sickening; noone else seemed to have the guts to challenge it; and the girls' words are inspiring. 

Novels and music

Have been indulging myself in past week – eg reading three John le Carre novels in quick succession – A Small Town in Germany (1968); The Second Pilgrim (1991); and The Looking Glass War (1965). His portrayal of Embassy life in the first two is cutting; and the dialogues on the compromises such people make rise occasionally to Shakespearean levels. Corporate power looms large in the middle book – and the conclusions of all three books, unusually for such thrillers, give idealists little hope. I’ve come late to le Carre and am hooked. He is a great wordsmith; crafts great atmosphere; and, by virtue of his focus on moral dilemmas, can reasonably claim to be one of the great political novelists.  

Pity he can’t be persuaded to write a novel based on Romanian political realities! Presumably someone will soon write a novel focused on the recent work of prosecutors here which, having put one ex-Prime Minister and a Minister of Agriculture into prison, now have another ex-Minister and current MEP in their sights 

A great Romanian pianist died at the weekend – at the tragically young age of 33 - Mihaela Ursuleasa

She represented Romania’s great cultural tradition whose musical side was celebrated recently in a Sarah in Romania post 

Not just the well-known Enescu but composers such as Porumbescu (here and here); Martian Neagra, Dinicu  and Constantinescu to mention a handful. And these are just some of the composers! Then throw in the performers eg The Balinescu quartet eg their wine’s so good and their Life and Death. Hopefully you can hear the YouTube music - for the moment I have no sound!

What a pity that their political class has dragged the country's reputation down!

And I have just learned that Gore Vidal has died - at age 86. I've only read a couple of his novels but it was his increasingly acerbic essays on American politics which had me rolling in the aisles - particularly his mock State of the Union addresses.

State Capture

I returned from Sofia last Thursday (with many litres of white Bulgarian wine) and am now back in the mountains – silent witness to the latest events of the pantomime which passes for politics here in Romania.

Only 46 percent of voters apparently cast their ballots in Sunday’s referendum called after the Romanian parliament suspended Basescu in early July on accusations that he had overstepped his power. Given the outdated nature of the electoral register, this is an astonishingly high percentage for such a contentious, quickly-called and inconveniently-timed referendum and suggest to me the ballot-stuffing of which this government has proved itself highly capable.
88 percent of those who did bother to vote favoured Basescu's ejection, but the president had asked his followers to boycott the referendum.

On Monday, just hours after the country's Central Election Bureau announced that voter turnout had not been sufficient to make results of the referendum valid, Basescu went on the attack. Those who "organized this failed coup," he said, "should be held responsible before the state institutions."

Prime Minister Victor Ponta promptly responded by demanding that the president resign. "He will probably stay in the presidential palace, will have cars, villas and some profiteers around him who will continue to advise and praise him," Ponta said on Monday. "But for the Romanian people he stopped being a leader last night."

The Romanian Academic Society is one of the few bodies in this country which tries to offer analysis rather than emotional diatribes – and I missed its typically balanced paper which puts the recent antics in the detailed context of legislative and political events and court decisions in Romania over the past 2-3 years. The paper draws attention to the scale of parliamentarian cross-dressing (MPs changing parties during the course of a parliament) and argues that 

the reason for this bitter fighting and the high political migration in Romania is one and the same: the high stakes of state capture in an environment with major corruption opportunities. 

The paper even-handedly points to the corruption of Basescu colleagues which has been unearthed recently – undermining the argument that this has been, in the phrase of one German newspaper, a case of white knights versus black knights

A system in which the suspended President’s daughter; acting President’s wife and Prime Minister’s wife are all (from different parties) Members of the European Parliament indicates just what a self-serving political class we have here. Another RAS commentary gives more detail on the political aspects of the RomanianConstitutional Court.

And a Transition Online article puts the Romanian judicial situation in the wider context of Central Europe. 

Firm action from the EC

With the Danube and mid Balkan towns having hit 42 degrees on Sunday, we edged nervously out of the Bucharest suburbs at 07.30 Monday. But the forecasts had assured us of more acceptable temperatures - and the drive to Sofia was in fact a delight. The Bulgarian roads from Russe to Sofia are like the old RN French roads – narrow but straight – and offer very relaxed conditions (if you know where to watch for the cops). 

And Sofia welcomed us six hours later with a great rose wine and meal. Who can ask for more?

Every day since dawns coolly – with the narrow streets and trees offering great cycling conditions until mid afternoon when we disappear into the Rodina Hotel pool and exercises.

In our absence the EC has acted, as Tom Gallagher argues here, with commendable firmness toward its wayward child and issued yesterday an appropriate judgement, the technical detail of which can be seen here 

The Romanian President will still lose the 29 July vote – and it is highly unlikely that the complex package of nationalistic outrage (“we obey only Romanians”) and admissions of guilt and remorse by the Prime Minister and acting President will in fact translate into anything significant thereafter. 

Most of the western commentators have taken Basescu’s side – mainly because of the sheer crudity and stupidity of the tactics used in the Ponta power grab (Iliescu,  Nastase and even Basescu were so much more clever). Basescu is credited by Westerners with being the real reformer and certainly is the one person who has pursued judicial reform with real zeal. But to those who excuse Basescu’s breaches of constitutionality (he ruled for several years, for example, on emergency ordinances while having a parliamentary majority) I simply reply that I have still to see an article (in English) which can convince me (judicial reform apart) that he has in the past 8 years actually been pursuing a coherent reform agenda. 

He seems to me just a bull in a china shop – who loves the sound of his own bellow.  

A leftist website gives, amazingly, a more objective perspective. 
And an article in Der Spiegel gives some useful background on the political party set-up -

Ponta's three-party alliance, called the Social Liberal Union, is populated by a worrying number of prominent politicians and businesspeople who are suspected of corruption, abuse of office or crime. Interim President Antonescu's National Liberal Party, for example, provides a political home to the oil magnate and billionaire Dinu Patriciu, who has successfully withstood years of investigations into allegedly corrupt privatization deals. Head of the insignificant Conservative Party, Dan Voiculescu, is a former Securitate employee who was instrumental in helping ex-Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu acquire hard currency. Now one of the richest people in the country, he owns the influential television broadcasters Antena1 and Antena3.
And then there is the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Prime Minister Victor Ponta. The party has its origins in the days following the toppling of Ceausescu in December 1989. It rapidly became a collection of former Securitate and communist party elites and is seen by many in Romania as the ultimate symbol of a corrupt oligarchy.
Ponta's political mentor, former Prime Minister and PSD head Adrian Nastase, for example, is an icon of political corruption. On June 20, he was sentenced to two years behind bars for illegal campaign and party financing practices. It was the first time in two decades that a politician of his caliber was sent to jail. In an attempt to avoid jail time, Nastase last month acted out an elaborate suicide attempt -- which merely delayed his sentence by a few days. He is now in jail.

A 'Duplicitous Scoundrel'Nastase's sentencing, however, was the ultimate warning shot fired across the bow of Romania's corrupt elite. If someone at the level of Nastase can be thrown in jail, then it can happen to anybody. Indeed, observers believe that his sentencing is the primary motivation for the power struggle currently engaged in by Ponta and Basescu. "They are doing all they can to resist an independent judiciary," says the lawyer Laura Stefan. "They would rather that Romania was in a kind of gray area outside of the European Union."