Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Julian, J’Accuse: Enabling Autocrats a Bridge Too Far

I know I’m not going to be popular burning this particular bridge (at least on Dkos where this diary was first published), but as news comes out about Assange both claiming intellectual copyright on wikileaks, and enabling the persecution (or worse) of dissidents in one of the few remaining Stalinist states in Europe, let me say: Julian, J’Accuse.

This is nothing to do with potential rape charges, or the appeal he still has with the British Supreme court about his extradition. It has nothing to do with the wikileaks data dump of Pentagon and Embassy files, which doesn’t seem to have the horrendous effect predicted. It also has nothing to do with the court martial of Bradley Manning, nor indeed the treatment (cruel to my mind) he seems to have received while held by the DOD. It has to do with his insouciance about the people exposed through his actions, and even more to do with whom he exposes them too.

Personal disclosure first. My judgement about Assange is highly coloured by a friend of mine, the sterling UK based American investigative journalist Heather Brooke, who exposed the MPs expenses scandal here, and is one of our great promoters of transparency and open government. She worked with Assange on the Guardian’s (selected) wikileaks release. If she now thinks he has gone beyond the pale – I trust her, and he has.

Heather linked recently to a New Statesman article which exposed how wikileaks dealt directly with the autocratic Belarus Government in Minsk, one of Europe’s few surviving dictatorships:

In December 2010, Israel Shamir, a WikiLeaks associate and an intimate friend of Julian Assange — so close, in fact, that he outed the Swedish women who claim to be victims of rape and sexual assault by Assange — allegedly travelled to Belarus with a cache of unredacted American diplomatic cables concerning the country. He reportedly met Lukashenko’s chief of staff, Vladimir Makei, handed over the documents to the government, and stayed in the country to “observe” the presidential elections.

When Lukashenko pronounced himself the winner on 19 December 2010 with nearly 80 per cent of the vote, Belarusians reacted by staging a mass protest. Lukashenko dispatched the state militia. As their truncheons bloodied the squares and streets of the capital, Minsk, Shamir wrote a story in the American left-wing journal Counterpunch extolling Lukashenko (“The president of Belarus … walks freely among his people”), deriding the dictator’s opponents (“The pro-western ‘Gucci’ crowd”, Shamir called them), and crediting WikiLeaks with exposing America’s “agents” in Belarus (“WikiLeaks has now revealed how… undeclared cash flows from the U.S. coffers to the Belarus ‘opposition’ “).

The following month, Soviet Belarus, a state-run newspaper, began serializing what it claimed to be extracts from the cables gifted to Lukashenko by WikiLeaks. Among the figures “exposed” as recipients of foreign cash were Andrei Sannikov, a defeated opposition presidential candidate presently serving a five-year prison sentence; Oleg Bebenin, Sannikov’s press secretary, who was found dead in suspicious circumstances months before the elections; and Vladimir Neklyayev, the writer and former president of Belarus PEN, who also ran against Lukashenko and is now under house arrest.

Did Assange at this point repudiate Shamir or speak up against Lukashenko? No. Instead he upbraided Ian Hislop for publishing an article in the Private Eye that exposed Shamir as a Holocaust denier and white supremacist. There was, he claimed, a “conspiracy” against him by “Jewish” journalists at the Guardian. Addicted to obedience from others and submerged in a swamp of conspiracy theories, Assange’s reflexive reaction to the first hint of disagreement by his erstwhile friends was to hold malign Jews responsible.

His subsequent attempts to distance himself from Shamir were undermined when James Ball, a former WikiLeaks staffer, revealed that not only did Assange authorise Shamir’s access to the cables — how else could he have got hold of the documents from this impenetrably secretive organisation consecrated to transparency? — he also stopped others from criticising Shamir even after news of his Belarusian expedition became public.

Another personal disclosure. I’m a regular visitor to Poland, and have connections to several dissident Belarus groups (through relatives) who have been persecuted, imprisoned and repressed by Lukashenko in the last 15 years. That more could be outed and endangered by Shamir and Assange puts the organisation of wikileaks beyond the pale.

I believe in transparency and openness. But I also know that knowledge is power. Perhaps Assange provides a service to well connected internet savvy people in some countries when they want to take on their autocrats, but naivete is no excuse for simultaneously revealing the secrets of persecuted minorities.

And if you’re still in doubt about the character and motivations of Assange, perhaps read the Guardian book WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. There you’ll see he not only betrays Nick Davies, the wonderful investigative journalist who – against all the odds of police and political pressure and corporate coverup – exposed the Hackgate scandal and brought down Murdoch’s News International – he also told David Leigh about Afghani informants being in danger:

Assange initially rejected pleas to redact documents to protect sources. At an early meeting with international reporters in a restaurant he told them: ” ‘Well, they’re informants,’ he said. ‘So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.’ There was, for a moment, silence around the table.”

The bridge was smouldering then. It’s burnt now


20 comments

  1. Shaun Appleby

    And your concerns seem well founded, but Wikileaks has had a dramatic impact on international affairs reporting over recent years.  It seems to me one of the few credible sources for insights behind the curtain; insights that investigative journalism seems less able to provide in the days of corporate and global media.

    Assange gives me the creeps, frankly, and for all I know is a sociopath, but the institution of Wikileaks seems to provide an invaluable service and may have shifted the Overton Window on sovereign confidentiality a notch or two in the direction of disclosure.  If the material is accurate and not selectively released the historian’s view must be, “Let the chips fall where they may.”  If Assange can keep his fingerprints off the material, the material should speak for itself.

    It is the selectivity which is the issue, or am I missing something here?  What Wikileaks needs is not a philosopher-king as a spokesperson and founder but some healthy competition in the global intelligence disclosure “market,” which has not yet apparently emerged.

  2. My jaw dropped — literally, flopped right open — several times reading this.  This is horrifying.  This is indeed beyond the pale.

    This, I have no doubt, will be handwaved away, with all the distractions you disclaimed to begin with, by the Kos crowd who have anointed Assange as the saint of transparency.

    This is despicable.

  3. Strummerson

    is about the worst thing that has happened to Jewish criticism of Israeli policy.  He’s spent his career in demagoguery not against Zionism, but against Judaism itself by cherry picking talmudic statements and rabbinic responsa.  Norman Finkelstein, one of the most controversial figures on the anti-Zionist Jewish left has basically branded Shamir a serial liar and fabricator.  

    His wikipedia bio tells his story in a fairly balanced manner.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I

    That Assange would be close to Shamir in the first place is a blow to his own credibility.

  4. And I have to ask:  How much did Lukashenko pay Assange for that stuff?  Not that we’ll ever find out, I daresay.

    Methinks the patron saint of exposing secrets in the name of openness is, after all, merely a merchant of wouldn’t-you-like-to-know? goodies to whoever has the best price, and to hell with the consequences.  What a business model, after all:

    Sucker naive wannabe destroyers of The Evil System (Bradley Manning, say) into providing massive dumps of heretofore secret data….

    Fling said massive dumps out in public, with maximum publicity thanks to selective media manipulation and cheering throngs of “Transparency Now!” supporters….

    Thus establish one’s bona fides as the guy with access to all sorts of interesting information….

    And quietly, behind the scenes, peddle the really good stuff to whoever can meet one’s price.  After all, a life spent flitting about the international scene dodging The Man can’t be cheap to keep, eh?

Comments are closed.