Wednesday, April 03, 2013 10:42:26 PM
How Bradley Manning Could Have Prevented the Deepwater Horizon Explosion
Greg Palast's Column - http://www.vice.com/en_uk/columns/greg-palast
By Greg Palast
Greg Palast at an oil drilling platform on the Caspian See, Azerbaijan.
Greg Palast is a New York Times bestselling author and fearless investigative journalist whose reports appear on BBC Newsnight and in The Guardian. Palast eats the rich and spits them out. Catch his reports and films at http://www.gregpalast.com/ , where you can also securely send him your documents marked, "confidential".
Bradley Manning .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning .. tried to save the eleven men who died .. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7924009/BP-leak-the-worlds-worst-accidental-oil-spill.html – burned alive – on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010. But Barack Obama and the New York Times made sure that wouldn’t happen.
Three years ago this month, on the 20th of April, 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew itself to kingdom come.
Soon thereafter, a message came in to our office's chief of investigations, Ms Badpenny, from a person I dare not name, who was floating somewhere in the Caspian Sea along the coast of Baku, Central Asia.
The source was in mortal fear he’d be identified – and with good reason. Once we agreed on a safe method of communication, he revealed this: 17 months before BP’s Deepwater Horizon blew out and exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP rig suffered an identical blow-out in the Caspian Sea.
Crucially, both the Gulf and Caspian Sea blow-outs had the same identical cause: the failure of the cement “plug”.
To prevent blow-outs, drilled wells must be capped with cement. BP insisted on lacing its cement with nitrogen gas – the same stuff used in laughing gas – because it speeds up drying.
Time is money, and mixing some nitrogen gas into the cement saves a lot of money.
[ Deepwater Horizon rig: What went wrong? .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=50491049 ]
However, because BP’s penny-pinching method is so damn dangerous, they are nearly alone in using it in deep, high-pressure offshore wells.
The fire on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Photo via Creative Commons.
The reason: nitrogen gas can create gaps in the cement, allow methane gas to go up the borehole, fill the drilling platform with explosive gas – and boom, you’re dead.
So, when its Caspian Sea rig blew out in 2008, rather than change its ways, BP simply covered it up .. http://www.gregpalast.com/bps-secret-deepwater-blowout/ .
Our investigators discovered that the company hid the information from its own shareholders, from British regulators and from the US Securities Exchange Commission. The Vice-President of BP USA, David Rainey, withheld the information from the US Senate in a testimony he gave six months before the Gulf deaths. (Rainey was later charged with obstruction of justice .. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57550555/bp-workers-charged-with-manslaughter-in-deadly-deepwater-horizon-gulf-blast/ .. on a spill-related matter.)
Channel 4 agreed to send me .. http://www.gregpalast.com/stuck-in-lady-baba-land-excerpt-from-vultures-picnic/ .. to the benighted nation of Azerbaijan, whose waters the earlier BP blow-out occurred in, to locate witnesses who would be willing to talk to me without getting “disappeared”. (They didn’t talk, but they still disappeared.)
And I was arrested .. http://www.gregpalast.com/bp-coverup-they-knew/ . Some rat had tipped off the Security Ministry (the official name of the Department of Torture here in this Islamic Republic of BP). I knew I’d get out quick, because throwing a reporter of Her Majesty’s Empire into a dungeon would embarrass both BP and the Azeri oil-o-crats.
The gendarmes demanded our film, but I wasn’t overly concerned: Before I left London, Badpenny handed me one of those Austin Powers camera-in-pens, on which I’d loaded all I needed. But I did fear for my witnesses left behind in Azerbaijan – and for my source in a tiger cage in the USA: Pvt Bradley Manning.
Only after I dove into deep water in Baku did I discover, trolling through the so-called “WikiLeaks” documents, secret State Department cables released by Manning. The information was stunning: the US State Department knew about the BP blow-out in the Caspian .. http://www.gregpalast.com/bp-cover-uppart-2-bribery-george-bush-and-wikileaks/ .. and joined in the cover-up.
Apparently BP refused to tell its own partners, Chevron and Exxon, why the lucrative Caspian oil flow had stopped. Chevron bitched to the office of the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. (George Bush’s cabinet member should not be confused with the 129,000-tonne oil tanker "Condoleezza Rice", which Chevron named after their former board member.)
The US Ambassador got Chevron the answer: a blow-out of the nitrogen-laced cement cap on a giant Caspian Sea platform. The information was marked "SECRET". Apparently loose lips about sinking ships would help neither Chevron nor the Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, the beneficiary .. http://archive.atlantic-community.org/index/articles/view/History_Repeats_Itself_with_Azerbaijan%27s_%22Shah%22 .. of millions of dollars in payments of oil company baksheesh.
A Manning/Wiki cable. Photo via .. http://www.gregpalast.com/and-that-is-why-we-occupy/ .
So what about Bradley Manning?
Manning has been charged with “aiding the enemy” – a crime punishable by death.
But Manning’s sole and only purpose was to get out the truth. It wasn’t Manning who wrote the cover-up memos, he merely wanted to get them to the victims: us.
And since when did the public become “the enemy”?
Had Manning’s memos come out just a few months earlier, the truth about BP’s deadly drilling methods would have been revealed, and there’s little doubt BP would have had to change its ways. Those eleven men could well have been alive today.
Did Manning know about this particular hush-hush cable about BP’s blow-out when he decided he had to become Paul Revere and warn the planet?
That’s unlikely, in the thousands of cables he had. But he’d seen enough evidence of murder and mendacity in other cables, so, as Manning, under oath, told a court, he tried to give it all to the New York Times to have knowledgeable reporters review the cables confidentially for life-saving information.
The New York Times immediately seized on this extraordinary opportunity… to ignore Manning. The Times only ran it when the Guardian was going to scoop – and embarrass – the New York hacks.
Though there are limits. While reporter David Leigh put the story of BP’s prior blow-out on page one of the Guardian, neither the New York Times or any other major US news outlet ran the story of the blow-out and oil industry cover-up. No surprise there, though – the most “prestigious” US news programme, PBS Newshour, was sponsored by .. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Chevron-pulling-sponsorship-of-PBS-NewsHour-2323961.php … Chevron Corporation.
Bradley Manning. Photo via .. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bradley_Manning_US_Army.jpg .
Hanging their source while taking his applause
As a working journalist, and one whose head is likely to be in the foggy gun-sights of some jet jockey or a dictator’s goon squad, I have more than a little distaste for toffs like New York Times' former executive editor, columnist Bill Keller, who used Manning documents to cash in on a book deal and land star turns on television while simultaneously smearing his source Manning as .. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/18/mann-m18.html , “troubled", "emotionally fractured", "vague", "inchoate” and – cover the children's ears – “gay”.
Furthermore, while preening about their revelations from the Manning documents, the Times had no problem with imprisoning their source. I do acknowledge that the Times and Keller did editorialise that a sentence of life imprisonment without parole would be “overkill .. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/keller-private-mannings-confidant.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ”. How white of them.
When it was mentioned that Manning is no different from Daniel Ellsberg .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg , the CIA operative who released the Pentagon Papers, Keller reassured that the Times also told Ellsberg he was “on his own” and did not object to their source being charged as a spy.
And the Times' much-lauded exposure of the My Lai massacre .. http://pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-200.htm ? My late good friend, the great investigative reporter Ron Ridenhour, who gave the story to Seymour Hersh, told me that he and Hersh had to effectively blackmail the Times into printing it.
Manning: an aid to the enemy?
Times man Keller .. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/18/mann-m18.html .. writes that Manning, by going to “anti-American” WikiLeaks, threatened the release of, “information that might get troops in the field or innocent informants killed”.
Really?
This is the same Bill Keller who admits that he knew his paper’s reports in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction were completely false, but that he – as editor – covered up .. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/06/03/bill-keller-speaks-out-on-judy-miller-iraq-war/180289http://mediamatters .. his paper’s knowledge their WDM stories were simply bogus. Those stories validated the Bush propaganda and helped tip the political balance to invade Iraq. Four-thousand US soldiers died. I guess the idea is that releasing information that kills troops is criminal, but that disinformation that kills troops is quite acceptable.
Maybe I’m just cranky because I wouldn’t have seen my own sources vanish and my film grabbed if the Times had only run the Manning facts about BP and Caspian when they had the chance.
Look, I’m only picking on the New York Times and PBS Newshour because they are the best in America, God help us.
What other lives have been saved by the Manning revelations? Lots. Watch this space. I promise more aid to the enemies of the state – which is you, by the way.
Follow Greg on Twitter: @Greg_Palast
Previously - The Real Reason for the Iraq War
****
Greg Palast investigated the BP Deepwater Horizon deaths for Channel 4. Those dispatches are contained in his book, Vultures’ Picnic. On April the 5th, there will be a gathering in New York with Daniel Ellsberg and defenders of Bradley Manning. Visit Greg’s Facebook page for more information.
By Greg Palast 11 hours ago
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/how-bradley-manning-could-have-saved-the-lives-bps-oil-rig-stole
Great work, Greg .. i heard this morning that a law passed in Sweden last year relating to sexual stuff could have in it a bit that would allow extradition of Julian Assange to the USA .. don't know if that is true, or not, wouldn't be at all surprised .. Australia according to this wouldn't mind ..
The Australian Government Is Actually Passing New Laws To Help The US Extradite Julian Assange
Michael Kelley 16 April 2012 10:20 PM
http://au.businessinsider.com/australian-government-assisting-extradition-of-julian-assange-to-us-2012-4
====== .... here is a latest nothing of which i've seen on tv news in Sydney ..
Julian Assange safe from extradition to US, says Justice Stefan Lindskog
AAP - April 03, 2013 11:21PM
The case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a mess, Justice Stefan Lindskog has told an Adelaide audience.
[ .. notice the "safe" in the heading then the "may be safe" just below ]
JULIAN Assange may be safe from extradition to the United States even if he returns to Sweden, suggests one of the Scandinavian country's top judges.
In a rare public lecture delivered in Adelaide, Justice Stefan Lindskog defended the leaking of classified information, saying the case against the WikiLeaks founder was "a mess'', and raised many questions over the legality of the US ever being able to extradite Assange via Sweden.
"It should never be a crime to make known crime of a state,'' Justice Lindskog, the chairman of the Supreme Court of Sweden, told a crowd at the University of Adelaide on Wednesday night.
Swedish prosecutors are pursuing Assange for questioning over allegations of sex offences against two women.
Assange is living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been granted political asylum after failing to resist moves to extradite him to Sweden.
He fears if he goes to Sweden he will be at risk of extradition to the US to face conspiracy or other charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining thousands of secret US military and diplomatic reports.
But Justice Lindskog, who went into an extraordinary amount of detail on Assange's Swedish sexual assault case, said the extradition treaty may see the courts rule against sending Assange to the US.
[ .. notice the "may" there, which could have just as well have been
written 'may see the courts rule for sending Assange to the US.' .. ]
"Extradition shall not be granted when alleged crimes (are) military or political in nature,'' he said.
He also said extradition could only be granted if the Swedish courts would hear a similar case to the charges being brought by the other country - and it was debatable if Mr Assange would have committed a crime under Swedish law.
"What is classified under US law is probably not classified under Swedish law, and enemies to the US may not be enemies to Sweden,'' he said.
Thirdly, Swedish law protected sources who leak to the press, he said, and that protection meant a prosecution would likely not go ahead in Sweden and therefore may not be grounds for extradition.
He added that extensive media coverage of the case has simply led to distrust in the legal system.
"I think it is a mess,'' he said.
Justice Lindskog also backed a suspected source to WikiLeaks, US soldier Bradley Manning.
He said the release of classified information was for the benefit of mankind - especially secret combat video in Iraq that showed the American crew mowing down a group of civilians and a Reuters photographer.
He said he hoped Mr Manning would have a fair trial.
Prior to the speech, Assange had condemned Justice Lindskog's decision to speak in Australia, calling it "absolutely outrageous''.
But George Williams, a University of New South Wales law professor who took part in a panel discussion after the speech, said it was important to remember the judge wasn't sitting on the case.
"This is a little unusual, but different countries have different standards when it comes to public comment on cases,'' he told AAP earlier in the week.
In February, Foreign Minister Bob Carr had stressed many of the same points as Justice Lindskog, saying it was "sheer fantasy'' to think the US could ever extradite Mr Assange from Sweden.
http://www.news.com.au/national-news/julian-assange-safe-from-extradition-to-us-says-justice-stefan-lindskog/story-fncynjr2-1226612062993
====== .. here is another just found which finds problems with Stefan Linkskog's speech ..
Stefan Lindskog speech in Adelaide
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
The speech appears to be a "stick and carrot" approach to pressure Assange into going to Sweden for questioning.
* Lindskog misrepresented the statements of SW, AA and others in order
to make the molestation allegations appear more well-founded than actual
* He projected an air that extradition to the US would not be possible
- for legal reasons to do with possible charges put by the US
- because e.g. helicopter gunships killing innocent people "in entertainment"
is a crime, and that leaking a crime by a state should never be a crime
.. but he avoided the possiblility of an extraditable charge framed so as to avoid political/espionage issues
* He asserted that an interview in London would be "wrong", but gave no legal reason. --- Well, there isn't one.
Misrepresentations
He said that all of his information on the matter came publicly-accessible leaked information on the Internet.
That being so, he must surely have read the police protocols (interviews) of SW, AA and others.
One
Lindskog asserted that SW went to the police station in order to make a complaint, with AA going along in support.
This is not so.
The police woman (Linda Wassgren) in reception described the beginning of the visit as
----------
At 14:00 that day two women came to the station who wanted to talk and get some advice on two previous events and they were a little unsure of how they would now go ahead.
----------
Donald Boström is clear that he ended up as an unwilling intermediary between the women and Assange. SW wanted Assange to get a HIV test. She and AA were going to the police to try to oblige him to if he refused. Boström is also taken aback due to the warm relations that he had observed between AA and Assange in the days after the alleged condom incident.
SW became very upset on hearing (before her formal interview had concluded) that an arrest warrant had been issued for Assange. She became so upset that it was not possible to complete the interview or for to sign off on the interview up to that point.
The protocol for SW's friend MT
----------
MT wanted also to say that, when SW visited the hospital and the police, it did not turn out as SW wanted. She only wanted Julian to get tested. She felt that she had been run over by the police and others."
----------
All of the indications, from SW, MT, Boström and Wassgren are that SW did not go to the police to make a complaint.
Two
Lindskog asserted that Assange initially refused to use a condom with AA and that "AA & Assange more or less had a physical fight over use of a condom"
This is a gross misrepresentation.
It is clear from AA's protocol that the question of a condom did not arise until they were both naked in her bed and she then resisted penetration.
----------
After a moment, Assange asked Anna what she was doing and why she was squeezing her legs together. Anna then told him that she wanted him to wear a condom before he came in her. At that, Assange released Anna’s arms and put on a condom that Anna fetched for him.
----------
That seems very clear. When Assange sensed a problem, he asked her. She explained. He agreed. Consensual bonking resumed.
She actually had to fetch a condom - as opposed to jamming one she already had in her hand into his face.
Three
Lindskog asserted that "AA did not realise that a crime was in question until it was explained to her by police office at police station".
This is perhaps a careless reading of something more than outright misrepresentation
It is possible that someone tried to explain to a very upset SW why they had issued an arrest warrant for Assange. AA had departed at that stage apparently and would only be formally interviewed on the following day - by telephone call.
Certainly the lawyer Claes Borgström appears to think that some silly women need to have things explained to them
----------
"They didn't know, actually, how they should handle the situation. We know that many women ... are not quite sure: was this a crime or not? It is in the neighbourhood, but on what side of the border is it?" The police officer who heard their story was legally obliged to contact a prosecutor, who judged it was a rape allegation, Bergström said.
----------
Four
Lindskog asserted that "Afterwards AA discovered that the condom was broken .."
During her interview, she offered that she might still have the condom in question and would check it.
----------
To my question Anna replies she did not look closely at the condom in order to see if it was broken in the way that she suspected; but she believes that she still has the condom at home and will check to see.
----------
This was eight days after the alleged breaking of the condom.
She did produce a broken condom, but this had no traces of DNA that would indicate that it had ever been used during intercourse.
Lindskog appears to have a clear agenda here.
He is using his position and the venue to project what appears to be a calm dispassionate lawerly picture of the basic issues.
He abuses this, grossly misrepresenting the contents of the protocols that he must surely have read.
This seems to be a blatant misinformation stunt - aimed at turning 'reasonable' public opinion to believe Assange to be more culpable than even the womens' statements would make him.
He also indicated that an interview under MLA in London is "wrong" - but in no way attempts to explain why.
Edit to add:
h/t to @Tuigen for noticing Lindskog saying "Why they didn't send someone to interview Assange by now, I don't know" - was this in the following Q&A that was cut from the livestream?
I still heard him describe it as "wrong" - so there is a mixed message.
A kinder interpretation of Lindskog's speech would be that....
.... he is a careless dupe who does not check available direct sources. He prefers to obtain information on which to base an internationally high-profile speech on gossip obtained from the chattering classes over a good dinner.
Yes. That is the kinder interpretation.
On a positive note:
Lindskog does say that the EWA was issued "to enforce the Swedish police requirement to interview" Assange.
That is indeed what they wish to do. Assange has never been interviewed in relation to EWA 1,3 and 4.
There is a Preliniary Investigation in progress. (More on that at the botttom of the main posting below.)
On a less positive note:
Lindskog says that an interview in London would be "wrong".
He does not say why. Certainly there does not appear to be any legal impediment.
Even the Swedish Prosecution are a loss to explain the need for Assenge to be interviewed in Sweden other than 'Prosecutor Ny says so - because of unspecified "circumstances within the investigation"
He did note that the case was largely about condoms. Yes
More below on why lawyers - while being possibly or not good sex partners in the actual act - are probably not a good proposition for negotiating an encounter - even if married to them.
Posted by Sling Trebuchet at 5:01 AM
http://sexwithlawyers.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/stefan-lindskog-speech-in-adelaide.html
Greg Palast's Column - http://www.vice.com/en_uk/columns/greg-palast
By Greg Palast
Greg Palast at an oil drilling platform on the Caspian See, Azerbaijan.
Greg Palast is a New York Times bestselling author and fearless investigative journalist whose reports appear on BBC Newsnight and in The Guardian. Palast eats the rich and spits them out. Catch his reports and films at http://www.gregpalast.com/ , where you can also securely send him your documents marked, "confidential".
Bradley Manning .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning .. tried to save the eleven men who died .. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7924009/BP-leak-the-worlds-worst-accidental-oil-spill.html – burned alive – on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010. But Barack Obama and the New York Times made sure that wouldn’t happen.
Three years ago this month, on the 20th of April, 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew itself to kingdom come.
Soon thereafter, a message came in to our office's chief of investigations, Ms Badpenny, from a person I dare not name, who was floating somewhere in the Caspian Sea along the coast of Baku, Central Asia.
The source was in mortal fear he’d be identified – and with good reason. Once we agreed on a safe method of communication, he revealed this: 17 months before BP’s Deepwater Horizon blew out and exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP rig suffered an identical blow-out in the Caspian Sea.
Crucially, both the Gulf and Caspian Sea blow-outs had the same identical cause: the failure of the cement “plug”.
To prevent blow-outs, drilled wells must be capped with cement. BP insisted on lacing its cement with nitrogen gas – the same stuff used in laughing gas – because it speeds up drying.
Time is money, and mixing some nitrogen gas into the cement saves a lot of money.
[ Deepwater Horizon rig: What went wrong? .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=50491049 ]
However, because BP’s penny-pinching method is so damn dangerous, they are nearly alone in using it in deep, high-pressure offshore wells.
The fire on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Photo via Creative Commons.
The reason: nitrogen gas can create gaps in the cement, allow methane gas to go up the borehole, fill the drilling platform with explosive gas – and boom, you’re dead.
So, when its Caspian Sea rig blew out in 2008, rather than change its ways, BP simply covered it up .. http://www.gregpalast.com/bps-secret-deepwater-blowout/ .
Our investigators discovered that the company hid the information from its own shareholders, from British regulators and from the US Securities Exchange Commission. The Vice-President of BP USA, David Rainey, withheld the information from the US Senate in a testimony he gave six months before the Gulf deaths. (Rainey was later charged with obstruction of justice .. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57550555/bp-workers-charged-with-manslaughter-in-deadly-deepwater-horizon-gulf-blast/ .. on a spill-related matter.)
Channel 4 agreed to send me .. http://www.gregpalast.com/stuck-in-lady-baba-land-excerpt-from-vultures-picnic/ .. to the benighted nation of Azerbaijan, whose waters the earlier BP blow-out occurred in, to locate witnesses who would be willing to talk to me without getting “disappeared”. (They didn’t talk, but they still disappeared.)
And I was arrested .. http://www.gregpalast.com/bp-coverup-they-knew/ . Some rat had tipped off the Security Ministry (the official name of the Department of Torture here in this Islamic Republic of BP). I knew I’d get out quick, because throwing a reporter of Her Majesty’s Empire into a dungeon would embarrass both BP and the Azeri oil-o-crats.
The gendarmes demanded our film, but I wasn’t overly concerned: Before I left London, Badpenny handed me one of those Austin Powers camera-in-pens, on which I’d loaded all I needed. But I did fear for my witnesses left behind in Azerbaijan – and for my source in a tiger cage in the USA: Pvt Bradley Manning.
Only after I dove into deep water in Baku did I discover, trolling through the so-called “WikiLeaks” documents, secret State Department cables released by Manning. The information was stunning: the US State Department knew about the BP blow-out in the Caspian .. http://www.gregpalast.com/bp-cover-uppart-2-bribery-george-bush-and-wikileaks/ .. and joined in the cover-up.
Apparently BP refused to tell its own partners, Chevron and Exxon, why the lucrative Caspian oil flow had stopped. Chevron bitched to the office of the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. (George Bush’s cabinet member should not be confused with the 129,000-tonne oil tanker "Condoleezza Rice", which Chevron named after their former board member.)
The US Ambassador got Chevron the answer: a blow-out of the nitrogen-laced cement cap on a giant Caspian Sea platform. The information was marked "SECRET". Apparently loose lips about sinking ships would help neither Chevron nor the Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, the beneficiary .. http://archive.atlantic-community.org/index/articles/view/History_Repeats_Itself_with_Azerbaijan%27s_%22Shah%22 .. of millions of dollars in payments of oil company baksheesh.
A Manning/Wiki cable. Photo via .. http://www.gregpalast.com/and-that-is-why-we-occupy/ .
So what about Bradley Manning?
Manning has been charged with “aiding the enemy” – a crime punishable by death.
But Manning’s sole and only purpose was to get out the truth. It wasn’t Manning who wrote the cover-up memos, he merely wanted to get them to the victims: us.
And since when did the public become “the enemy”?
Had Manning’s memos come out just a few months earlier, the truth about BP’s deadly drilling methods would have been revealed, and there’s little doubt BP would have had to change its ways. Those eleven men could well have been alive today.
Did Manning know about this particular hush-hush cable about BP’s blow-out when he decided he had to become Paul Revere and warn the planet?
That’s unlikely, in the thousands of cables he had. But he’d seen enough evidence of murder and mendacity in other cables, so, as Manning, under oath, told a court, he tried to give it all to the New York Times to have knowledgeable reporters review the cables confidentially for life-saving information.
The New York Times immediately seized on this extraordinary opportunity… to ignore Manning. The Times only ran it when the Guardian was going to scoop – and embarrass – the New York hacks.
Though there are limits. While reporter David Leigh put the story of BP’s prior blow-out on page one of the Guardian, neither the New York Times or any other major US news outlet ran the story of the blow-out and oil industry cover-up. No surprise there, though – the most “prestigious” US news programme, PBS Newshour, was sponsored by .. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Chevron-pulling-sponsorship-of-PBS-NewsHour-2323961.php … Chevron Corporation.
Bradley Manning. Photo via .. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bradley_Manning_US_Army.jpg .
Hanging their source while taking his applause
As a working journalist, and one whose head is likely to be in the foggy gun-sights of some jet jockey or a dictator’s goon squad, I have more than a little distaste for toffs like New York Times' former executive editor, columnist Bill Keller, who used Manning documents to cash in on a book deal and land star turns on television while simultaneously smearing his source Manning as .. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/18/mann-m18.html , “troubled", "emotionally fractured", "vague", "inchoate” and – cover the children's ears – “gay”.
Furthermore, while preening about their revelations from the Manning documents, the Times had no problem with imprisoning their source. I do acknowledge that the Times and Keller did editorialise that a sentence of life imprisonment without parole would be “overkill .. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/keller-private-mannings-confidant.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ”. How white of them.
When it was mentioned that Manning is no different from Daniel Ellsberg .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg , the CIA operative who released the Pentagon Papers, Keller reassured that the Times also told Ellsberg he was “on his own” and did not object to their source being charged as a spy.
And the Times' much-lauded exposure of the My Lai massacre .. http://pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-200.htm ? My late good friend, the great investigative reporter Ron Ridenhour, who gave the story to Seymour Hersh, told me that he and Hersh had to effectively blackmail the Times into printing it.
Manning: an aid to the enemy?
Times man Keller .. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/18/mann-m18.html .. writes that Manning, by going to “anti-American” WikiLeaks, threatened the release of, “information that might get troops in the field or innocent informants killed”.
Really?
This is the same Bill Keller who admits that he knew his paper’s reports in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction were completely false, but that he – as editor – covered up .. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/06/03/bill-keller-speaks-out-on-judy-miller-iraq-war/180289http://mediamatters .. his paper’s knowledge their WDM stories were simply bogus. Those stories validated the Bush propaganda and helped tip the political balance to invade Iraq. Four-thousand US soldiers died. I guess the idea is that releasing information that kills troops is criminal, but that disinformation that kills troops is quite acceptable.
Maybe I’m just cranky because I wouldn’t have seen my own sources vanish and my film grabbed if the Times had only run the Manning facts about BP and Caspian when they had the chance.
Look, I’m only picking on the New York Times and PBS Newshour because they are the best in America, God help us.
What other lives have been saved by the Manning revelations? Lots. Watch this space. I promise more aid to the enemies of the state – which is you, by the way.
Follow Greg on Twitter: @Greg_Palast
Previously - The Real Reason for the Iraq War
****
Greg Palast investigated the BP Deepwater Horizon deaths for Channel 4. Those dispatches are contained in his book, Vultures’ Picnic. On April the 5th, there will be a gathering in New York with Daniel Ellsberg and defenders of Bradley Manning. Visit Greg’s Facebook page for more information.
By Greg Palast 11 hours ago
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/how-bradley-manning-could-have-saved-the-lives-bps-oil-rig-stole
Great work, Greg .. i heard this morning that a law passed in Sweden last year relating to sexual stuff could have in it a bit that would allow extradition of Julian Assange to the USA .. don't know if that is true, or not, wouldn't be at all surprised .. Australia according to this wouldn't mind ..
The Australian Government Is Actually Passing New Laws To Help The US Extradite Julian Assange
Michael Kelley 16 April 2012 10:20 PM
http://au.businessinsider.com/australian-government-assisting-extradition-of-julian-assange-to-us-2012-4
====== .... here is a latest nothing of which i've seen on tv news in Sydney ..
Julian Assange safe from extradition to US, says Justice Stefan Lindskog
AAP - April 03, 2013 11:21PM
The case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a mess, Justice Stefan Lindskog has told an Adelaide audience.
[ .. notice the "safe" in the heading then the "may be safe" just below ]
JULIAN Assange may be safe from extradition to the United States even if he returns to Sweden, suggests one of the Scandinavian country's top judges.
In a rare public lecture delivered in Adelaide, Justice Stefan Lindskog defended the leaking of classified information, saying the case against the WikiLeaks founder was "a mess'', and raised many questions over the legality of the US ever being able to extradite Assange via Sweden.
"It should never be a crime to make known crime of a state,'' Justice Lindskog, the chairman of the Supreme Court of Sweden, told a crowd at the University of Adelaide on Wednesday night.
Swedish prosecutors are pursuing Assange for questioning over allegations of sex offences against two women.
Assange is living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been granted political asylum after failing to resist moves to extradite him to Sweden.
He fears if he goes to Sweden he will be at risk of extradition to the US to face conspiracy or other charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining thousands of secret US military and diplomatic reports.
But Justice Lindskog, who went into an extraordinary amount of detail on Assange's Swedish sexual assault case, said the extradition treaty may see the courts rule against sending Assange to the US.
[ .. notice the "may" there, which could have just as well have been
written 'may see the courts rule for sending Assange to the US.' .. ]
"Extradition shall not be granted when alleged crimes (are) military or political in nature,'' he said.
He also said extradition could only be granted if the Swedish courts would hear a similar case to the charges being brought by the other country - and it was debatable if Mr Assange would have committed a crime under Swedish law.
"What is classified under US law is probably not classified under Swedish law, and enemies to the US may not be enemies to Sweden,'' he said.
Thirdly, Swedish law protected sources who leak to the press, he said, and that protection meant a prosecution would likely not go ahead in Sweden and therefore may not be grounds for extradition.
He added that extensive media coverage of the case has simply led to distrust in the legal system.
"I think it is a mess,'' he said.
Justice Lindskog also backed a suspected source to WikiLeaks, US soldier Bradley Manning.
He said the release of classified information was for the benefit of mankind - especially secret combat video in Iraq that showed the American crew mowing down a group of civilians and a Reuters photographer.
He said he hoped Mr Manning would have a fair trial.
Prior to the speech, Assange had condemned Justice Lindskog's decision to speak in Australia, calling it "absolutely outrageous''.
But George Williams, a University of New South Wales law professor who took part in a panel discussion after the speech, said it was important to remember the judge wasn't sitting on the case.
"This is a little unusual, but different countries have different standards when it comes to public comment on cases,'' he told AAP earlier in the week.
In February, Foreign Minister Bob Carr had stressed many of the same points as Justice Lindskog, saying it was "sheer fantasy'' to think the US could ever extradite Mr Assange from Sweden.
http://www.news.com.au/national-news/julian-assange-safe-from-extradition-to-us-says-justice-stefan-lindskog/story-fncynjr2-1226612062993
====== .. here is another just found which finds problems with Stefan Linkskog's speech ..
Stefan Lindskog speech in Adelaide
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
The speech appears to be a "stick and carrot" approach to pressure Assange into going to Sweden for questioning.
* Lindskog misrepresented the statements of SW, AA and others in order
to make the molestation allegations appear more well-founded than actual
* He projected an air that extradition to the US would not be possible
- for legal reasons to do with possible charges put by the US
- because e.g. helicopter gunships killing innocent people "in entertainment"
is a crime, and that leaking a crime by a state should never be a crime
.. but he avoided the possiblility of an extraditable charge framed so as to avoid political/espionage issues
* He asserted that an interview in London would be "wrong", but gave no legal reason. --- Well, there isn't one.
Misrepresentations
He said that all of his information on the matter came publicly-accessible leaked information on the Internet.
That being so, he must surely have read the police protocols (interviews) of SW, AA and others.
One
Lindskog asserted that SW went to the police station in order to make a complaint, with AA going along in support.
This is not so.
The police woman (Linda Wassgren) in reception described the beginning of the visit as
----------
At 14:00 that day two women came to the station who wanted to talk and get some advice on two previous events and they were a little unsure of how they would now go ahead.
----------
Donald Boström is clear that he ended up as an unwilling intermediary between the women and Assange. SW wanted Assange to get a HIV test. She and AA were going to the police to try to oblige him to if he refused. Boström is also taken aback due to the warm relations that he had observed between AA and Assange in the days after the alleged condom incident.
SW became very upset on hearing (before her formal interview had concluded) that an arrest warrant had been issued for Assange. She became so upset that it was not possible to complete the interview or for to sign off on the interview up to that point.
The protocol for SW's friend MT
----------
MT wanted also to say that, when SW visited the hospital and the police, it did not turn out as SW wanted. She only wanted Julian to get tested. She felt that she had been run over by the police and others."
----------
All of the indications, from SW, MT, Boström and Wassgren are that SW did not go to the police to make a complaint.
Two
Lindskog asserted that Assange initially refused to use a condom with AA and that "AA & Assange more or less had a physical fight over use of a condom"
This is a gross misrepresentation.
It is clear from AA's protocol that the question of a condom did not arise until they were both naked in her bed and she then resisted penetration.
----------
After a moment, Assange asked Anna what she was doing and why she was squeezing her legs together. Anna then told him that she wanted him to wear a condom before he came in her. At that, Assange released Anna’s arms and put on a condom that Anna fetched for him.
----------
That seems very clear. When Assange sensed a problem, he asked her. She explained. He agreed. Consensual bonking resumed.
She actually had to fetch a condom - as opposed to jamming one she already had in her hand into his face.
Three
Lindskog asserted that "AA did not realise that a crime was in question until it was explained to her by police office at police station".
This is perhaps a careless reading of something more than outright misrepresentation
It is possible that someone tried to explain to a very upset SW why they had issued an arrest warrant for Assange. AA had departed at that stage apparently and would only be formally interviewed on the following day - by telephone call.
Certainly the lawyer Claes Borgström appears to think that some silly women need to have things explained to them
----------
"They didn't know, actually, how they should handle the situation. We know that many women ... are not quite sure: was this a crime or not? It is in the neighbourhood, but on what side of the border is it?" The police officer who heard their story was legally obliged to contact a prosecutor, who judged it was a rape allegation, Bergström said.
----------
Four
Lindskog asserted that "Afterwards AA discovered that the condom was broken .."
During her interview, she offered that she might still have the condom in question and would check it.
----------
To my question Anna replies she did not look closely at the condom in order to see if it was broken in the way that she suspected; but she believes that she still has the condom at home and will check to see.
----------
This was eight days after the alleged breaking of the condom.
She did produce a broken condom, but this had no traces of DNA that would indicate that it had ever been used during intercourse.
Lindskog appears to have a clear agenda here.
He is using his position and the venue to project what appears to be a calm dispassionate lawerly picture of the basic issues.
He abuses this, grossly misrepresenting the contents of the protocols that he must surely have read.
This seems to be a blatant misinformation stunt - aimed at turning 'reasonable' public opinion to believe Assange to be more culpable than even the womens' statements would make him.
He also indicated that an interview under MLA in London is "wrong" - but in no way attempts to explain why.
Edit to add:
h/t to @Tuigen for noticing Lindskog saying "Why they didn't send someone to interview Assange by now, I don't know" - was this in the following Q&A that was cut from the livestream?
I still heard him describe it as "wrong" - so there is a mixed message.
A kinder interpretation of Lindskog's speech would be that....
.... he is a careless dupe who does not check available direct sources. He prefers to obtain information on which to base an internationally high-profile speech on gossip obtained from the chattering classes over a good dinner.
Yes. That is the kinder interpretation.
On a positive note:
Lindskog does say that the EWA was issued "to enforce the Swedish police requirement to interview" Assange.
That is indeed what they wish to do. Assange has never been interviewed in relation to EWA 1,3 and 4.
There is a Preliniary Investigation in progress. (More on that at the botttom of the main posting below.)
On a less positive note:
Lindskog says that an interview in London would be "wrong".
He does not say why. Certainly there does not appear to be any legal impediment.
Even the Swedish Prosecution are a loss to explain the need for Assenge to be interviewed in Sweden other than 'Prosecutor Ny says so - because of unspecified "circumstances within the investigation"
He did note that the case was largely about condoms. Yes
More below on why lawyers - while being possibly or not good sex partners in the actual act - are probably not a good proposition for negotiating an encounter - even if married to them.
Posted by Sling Trebuchet at 5:01 AM
http://sexwithlawyers.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/stefan-lindskog-speech-in-adelaide.html
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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