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Tag: Al-Qaeda

  • Turkey’s President Hails Death As a Warning

    Turkey’s President Hails Death As a Warning

    By Joe Parkinson

    ISTANBUL — In Turkey, where coordinated Al-Qaeda attacks on Istanbul killed more than 60 people and wounded hundreds in 2003, President Abdullah Gul hailed the news, stressing it should serve as a warning to terrorist leaders elsewhere that they would be caught “dead or alive.”

    Speaking to reporters at Ankara airport before departing for a state visit to Austria, Mr. Gul was quoted by state-run Anadolu Ajansi news agency as saying; “This news shows that the fate of terrorists and the leaders of terrorist organizations is to be caught in the end, dead or alive. That the most dangerous and sophisticated (terrorist) leader was caught this way, should be a lesson to everyone.”

    Al-Qaeda has been held responsible for sporadic attacks in Turkey over the past decade, with Turkish police regularly targeting suspected al-Qaeda supporters since two sets of twin suicide bombings hit Istanbul five days apart in November 2003. A Turkish cell of al-Qaeda was held responsible for the attacks, in which explosive-laden trucks first targeted two synagogues, and then the British consulate and a British bank, killing a total of 63 people.

    Turkey’s Islamic-leaning government has taken a tough stand against all forms of terrorism, but security services here say Al-Qaeda cells remain operational at a low level across the country, while there are small pockets of sympathy for jihadist Islam.

    Turkish police arrested 120 al-Qaeda suspects in a major nationwide anti-terror operation in January, while Al-Qaeda’s leader in Istanbul was among a group of around 40 people detained by police last month (April) in a series of raids targeting Islamists in Turkey’s largest city.

    via Turkey’s President Hails Death As a Warning – Dispatch – WSJ.

  • David Cameron’s Statement on the death of Usama bin Laden, and counter terrorism

    David Cameron’s Statement on the death of Usama bin Laden, and counter terrorism

    cameron2

    Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement to the House of Commons on the death of Usama bin Laden and counter-terrorism.

    Read the statement

    The death of Usama bin Laden will have important consequences for the security of our people at home and abroad and for our foreign policy, including our partnership with Pakistan, our military action in Afghanistan and the wider fight against terrorism across the world.

    Last night I chaired a meeting of COBR to begin to address some of these issues.

    The National Security Council has met this morning.

    And I wanted to come to the House this afternoon, to take the first opportunity to address these consequences directly and answer Hon Members’ questions.

    Mr Speaker, at 3am yesterday I received a call from President Obama. He informed me that US Special Forces had successfully mounted a targeted operation against a compound in Abbottabad, in Pakistan.

    Usama bin Laden had been killed, along with four others: bin Laden’s son, two others linked to him, and a female member of his family entourage. There was a ferocious firefight, and a US helicopter had to be destroyed but there was no loss of American life.

    I am sure the whole House will join me in congratulating President Obama and praising the courage and skill of the American Special Forces who carried out this operation.

    It is a strike at the heart of international terrorism, and a great achievement for America and for all who have joined in the long struggle to defeat Al Qaeda.

    We should remember today in particular the brave British servicemen and women who have given their lives in the fight against terrorism across the world.

    And we should pay tribute especially to those British forces who have played their part over the last decade in the hunt for bin Laden.

    He was the man who was responsible for 9/11 – which was not only an horrific killing of Americans, but remains to this day, the largest loss of British life in any terrorist attack.

    A man who inspired further atrocities including in Bali, Madrid, Istanbul and of course, here in London on 7/7.

    …and, let us remember, a man who posed as a leader of Muslims but was actually a mass murderer of Muslims all over the world. Indeed he killed more Muslims than people of any other faith.

    Mr Speaker, nothing will bring back the loved ones who have been lost and of course no punishment at our disposal can remotely fit the many appalling crimes for which he was responsible.

    But I hope that at least for the victims’ families there is now a sense of justice being served, as a long dark chapter in their lives is finally closed.

    As the head of a family group for United Airlines Flight 93, put it – we are “raised, obviously, never to hope for someone’s death” but we are “willing to make an exception in this case … He was evil personified, and our world is a better place without him.”

    Mr Speaker, Britain was with America from the first day of the struggle to defeat Al Qaeda. Our resolve today is as strong as it was then. There can be no impunity and no safe-refuge for those who kill in the name of this poisonous ideology.

    Security

    Mr Speaker, our first focus must be our own security.

    While bin Laden is gone, the threat of Al Qaeda remains.

    Clearly there is a risk that Al Qaeda and its affiliates in places like Yemen and the Mahgreb will want to demonstrate they are able to operate effectively.

    And, of course, there is always the risk of a radicalised individual acting alone, a so-called lone-wolf attack.

    So we must be more vigilant than ever – and we must maintain that vigilance for some time to come.

    The terrorist threat level in the UK is already at Severe – which is as high as it can go without intelligence of a specific threat.

    We will keep that threat level under review – working closely with the intelligence agencies and the police.

    In terms of people travelling overseas, we have updated our advice and encourage British nationals to monitor the media carefully for local reactions, remain vigilant, exercise caution in public places and avoid demonstrations.

    And we have ordered our embassies across the world to review their security.

    Pakistan

    Mr Speaker, let me turn next to Pakistan.

    The fact that bin Laden was living in a large house in a populated area suggests that he must have had a support network in Pakistan.

    We don’t currently know the extent of that network, so it is right that we ask searching questions about it. And we will.

    But let’s start with what we do know.

    Pakistan has suffered more from terrorism than any other country in the world.

    As President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani said to me when I spoke to them yesterday, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians have been killed. And more Pakistani soldiers and security forces have died fighting extremism than international forces killed in Afghanistan.

    Usama Bin Laden was an enemy of Pakistan. He had declared war against the Pakistani people. And he had ordered attacks against them.

    President Obama said in his statement: “counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.”

    Continued co-operation will be just as important in the days ahead.

    I believe it is in Britain’s national interest to recognise that we share the same struggle against terrorism.

    That’s why we will continue to work with our Pakistani counterparts on intelligence gathering, tracing plots and taking action to stop them.

    It’s why we will continue to honour our aid promises – including our support for education as a critical way of helping the next generation of Pakistanis to turn their back on extremism and look forward to a brighter and more prosperous future.

    But above all, it’s why we were one of the founder members of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan. Because it is by working with the democrats in Pakistan that we can make sure the whole country shares the same determination to fight terror.

    Afghanistan

    Mr Speaker, I also spoke yesterday to President Karzai in Afghanistan.

    We both agreed that the death of bin Laden provides a new opportunity for Afghanistan and Pakistan to work together to achieve stability on both sides of the border.

    Our strategy towards Afghanistan is straightforward and has not changed.

    We want an Afghanistan capable of looking after its own security without the help of foreign forces.

    We should take this opportunity to send a clear message to the Taleban: now is the time for them to separate themselves from Al Qaeda and participate in a peaceful political process.

    Mr Speaker, the myth of Bin Laden was one of a freedom fighter, living in austerity and risking his life for the cause as he moved around in the hills and mountainous caverns of the tribal areas.

    The reality of Bin Laden was very different: a man who encouraged others to make the ultimate sacrifice while he himself hid in the comfort of a large, expensive villa in Pakistan, experiencing none of the hardship he expected his supporters to endure.

    Libya

    Mr Speaker, finally let me briefly update the House on Libya.

    In recent weeks we have stepped up our air campaign to protect the civilian population.

    Every element of Qadhafi’s war machine has been degraded.

    Over the last few days alone, NATO aircraft have struck 35 targets including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as bunkers and ammunition storage facilities.

    We have also made strikes against his command and control centres which direct his operations against civilians.

    Over the weekend there were reports that in one of those strikes Colonel Qadhafi’s son, Saif al-Arab Qadhafi, was killed.

    All the targets chosen were clearly within the boundaries set by UN Resolutions 1970 and 1973.

    These Resolutions permit all necessary measures to protect civilian life – including attacks on command and control bases.

    Mr Speaker, this weekend also saw attacks on the British and Italian embassies.

    We utterly deplore this.

    The Qadhafi regime is in clear beach of the Vienna convention to protect diplomatic missions. We hold them fully to account. And we have already expelled the Libyan Ambassador from London.

    The British embassy was looted as well as destroyed.

    The World War Two Memorial was desecrated.

    And the UN have felt obliged to pull their people out for fear of attack.

    Qadhafi made much of his call for a ceasefire.

    But at the very moment Qadhafi claimed he wanted to talk, he had in fact been laying mines in Misurata harbour to stop humanitarian aid getting in and continuing his attacks on civilians, including attacks across the border in neighbouring Tunisia.

    Mr Speaker, we must continue to enforce the UN resolutions fully until such a time as they are completely complied with.

    And that means continuing the NATO mission until there is an end to all attacks on – and threats to – civilians.

    Conclusion

    Mr Speaker, bin Laden and Qadhafi were said to have hated each other. But there was a common thread running between them.

    They both feared the idea that democracy and civil rights could take hold in the Arab world.

    While we should continue to degrade, dismantle and defeat the terrorist networks a big part of the long term answer is the success of democracy in the Middle East and the conclusion of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

    For twenty years, bin Laden claimed that the future of the Muslim world would be his.

    But what Libya has shown – as Egypt and Tunisia before it – is that people are rejecting everything that bin Laden stood for.

    Instead of replacing dictatorship with his extremist totalitarianism, they are choosing democracy.

    Ten years on from the terrible tragedy of 9/11, with the end of bin Laden and the democratic awakening across the Arab world, we must seize this unique opportunity to deliver a decisive break with the forces of Al Qaeda and its poisonous ideology which has caused so much suffering for so many years.

    And I commend this statement to the House.

    The Prime Ministers Office

    Number 10

  • Without secular government, there is no religious freedom

    Without secular government, there is no religious freedom

    Without secular government, there is no religious freedom

    By Susan Jacoby
    3rd January 2011, Washington Post

    To end the old year and begin the new, there is more entirely predictable bad news from the world of radical Islam. On New Year’s Eve in Pakistan, Islamist political parties brought business and government to a standstill with massive protests against any potential changes in a blasphemy law that carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of “insulting Islam.” On New Year’s Day in Alexandria, Egypt, a suicide bomb attack in a Coptic Christian church wounded at least 96 and killed 21 people. In Iraq, attacks on Christians that began in October continued, causing the flight of additional refugees toward the more tolerant Kurdish territory to the north.

    The governments–our putative allies in the Muslim world (and in Iraq, a government that would never have come into being without American military force)–seemed unable or unwilling to display any backbone on behalf of secular principles of governance. The target was a Christian minority but the truth is that without secular government, freedom of religion can never flourish. To look at the violence as an issue of “interfaith relations,” as this week’s On Faith question does, is to ignore the obvious: Equality among either believers of different faiths, or between believers and nonbelievers, can never exist when one religion occupies a privileged legal position.

    Of course, all of this casts even more doubt on post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy, based under both the Bush and Obama administrations on the notion, unsupported thus far by evidence, that a combination of war and diplomacy can hobble radical Islam as a threat to the democracy and security of the world.

    What interfaith relations? In Islamic theocracies, of course, there are no such relations by definition–except when theocratic rulers smash dissent. In fragile nation-states like Pakistan and Iraq, Islam has pride of place but there is supposed to be some toleration of minorities. These governments have little will or ability to protect the rights of non-Muslims (or even of Muslims who disagree with their more radical co-religionists).

    The question for the United States is not what religious and political leaders should say about “challenges” to “interfaith relations.” It is whether America should continue spending its blood and treasure on wars based on the wishful notion that an American military presence, for whatever length of time, will somehow make majority Islamic nations more amenable to a democracy that accomodates many forms of religious belief and nonbelief and is therefore less of a threat to the West.

    My guess is that nothing anyone has to say about these events from the West will have any effect at all. There are courageous citizens of these countries, though, who put mealymouthed western multiculturalists to shame. I strongly recommend the New Year’s Day editorial by Hani Shukrallah, editor of Ahram Online, titled, “J’accuse,” in which he says, “I am no Zola, but I too can accuse. And it’s not the blood thirsty criminals of al-Qaeda or whatever other gang of hoodlums involved in the horror of Alexandria that I am concerned with. I accuse a government that seems to think that by outbidding the Islamists it will also outflank them. I accuse the host of MPs and government officials who cannot help but take their own personal bigotries along to the parliament, or to the multitude of government bodies, national and local, from which they exercise unchecked, brutal, yet at the same time hopelessly inept authority…But most of all, I accuse the millions of supposedly moderate Muslims among us…I’ve been around, and I have heard you speak, in your offices, in your clubs, at your dinner parties: `The Copts must be taught a lesson,’ ‘the Copts are growing more arrogant,’ ‘the Copts are holding secret conversions of Muslims’….” Coptic Christians now make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population.

    Shukrallah concludes, in language worthy of Zola, “Our options…are not so impoverished and lacking in imaginination and resolve that we are obliged to choose between having Egyptian Copts killed, individually or en masse, or run to Uncle Sam. Is it really so difficult to conceive of ourselves as rational human beings with a minimum of backbone so as to act to determine our fate, the fate of our nation?”

    I’m wondering just how long Shukrallah is going to be walking around, free to raise his voice. I’m wondering what will happen to Mehdi Hasan, chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who said of the strike, “The liberal and democratic forces in this country have retreated so much that it has created an ideological vacuum that is now being filled by religious extremists.” This independent human rights commission has documented persecution of Christians and of members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority within Islam, who have been accused of blasphemy.

    The U.S. media has paid insufficient attention to attacks on Christians that have been escalating for years and do not happen to have occurred on a major Christian holiday. President Obama denounced the most recent attacks, but such denunciations have a way of making violence against Christians and Muslim minorities appear to be an exceptional event rather than an ongoing reality.

    Men like Shukrallah in Egypt and Hasan in Pakistan have every right to say “J’accuse” not only to “moderate” western Muslims but to non-Muslim multicuturalist liberals who have been silent about the behavior of radical Islamists. They also have a right to say “J’accuse” to supporters, inside and outside the U.S. government, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These war apologists won’t admit how bad things are because it would call the whole military effort question. What are we fighting for in Afghanistan? Surely we can’t be sending our soldiers to die for the right of Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan, to be free to execute people for blasphemy.

    Only in a secular world, informed by the best Enlightenment values upholding all freedom of thought (which includes but goes far beyond freedom of religion), has blasphemy been relegated to the ludicrous medieval status it deserves.

  • The Army Navy Game –

    The Army Navy Game –

    On Dec 20, 2010


    TRAIN2

    Here’s a ‘today’ Yule story that occurred 3 weeks ago ~ AND NOW, in time for the holidays, I bring you the best Christmas story you never heard.
    1.        
    It started last Christmas    , when Bennett and Vivian Levin were overwhelmed by sadness while listening to radio reports of injured American troops. “We have to let them know we care,” Vivian told Bennett. So they organized a trip to bring soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital to the annual Army-Navy football game in Philly, on Dec. 3.

    The cool part is, they created their own train line to do it. Yes, there are people in this country who actually own real trains. Bennett Levin – native Philly guy, self-made millionaire and irascible former L&I commish – is one of them.

    He has three luxury rail cars    . Think mahogany paneling, plush seating and white-linen dining areas. He also has two locomotives, which he stores at his Juniata Park train yard. One car, the elegant Pennsylvania , carried John F. Kennedy to the Army-Navy game in 1961 and ’62. Later, it carried his brother Bobby’s body to D. C. for burial. “That’s a lot of history for one car,” says Bennett.

    He and Vivian wanted to revive a tradition that endured from 1936 to 1975, during which trains carried Army-Navy spectators from around the country directly to the stadium where the annual game is played. The Levins could think of no better passengers to reinstate the ceremonial ride than the wounded men and women recovering at Walter Reed in D. C. and Bethesda , in Maryland . “We wanted to give them a first-class experience,” says Bennett. “Gourmet meals on board, private transportation from the train to the stadium, perfect seats – real hero treatment.”

    Through the Army War College Foundation, of which he is a trustee, Bennett met with Walter Reed’s commanding general, who loved the idea. But Bennett had some ground rules first, all designed to keep the focus on the troops alone:

    No press on the trip, lest the soldiers’ day of pampering devolve into a media circus    .

    No politicians either, because, says Bennett, “I didn’t want some idiot making this trip into a campaign photo op”

    And no Pentagon suits on board    , otherwise the soldiers would be too busy saluting superiors to relax.

    The general agreed to the conditions, and Bennett realized he had a problem on his hands. “I had to actually make this thing happen,” he laughs.

    Over the next months, he recruited owners of 15 other sumptuous rail cars from around the country – these people tend to know each other – into lending their vehicles for the day    . The name of their temporary train? The Liberty Limited.

    Amtrak volunteered     to transport the cars to D. C. – where they’d be coupled together for the round-trip ride to Philly – then back to their owners later.

    Conrail offered to service the Liberty while it was in Philly    . And SEPTA drivers would bus the disabled soldiers 200 yards from the train to Lincoln Financial Field, for the game.

    A benefactor from the War College ponied up 100 seats to the game – on the 50-yard line – and lunch in a hospitality suite    .

    And corporate donors filled    , for free and without asking for publicity, goodie bags for attendees:

    From Woolrich    , stadium blankets. From Wal-Mart, digital cameras. From Nikon, field glasses. From GEAR, down jackets.

    There was booty not just for the soldiers, but for their guests, too, since eachwas allowed to bring a friend or family member.

    The Marines, though, declined the offer    . “They voted not to take guests with them, so they could take more Marines,” says Levin, choking up at the memory.

    Bennett’s an emotional guy, so he was worried about how he’d react to meeting the 88 troops and guests at D. C.’s Union Station, where the trip originated. Some GIs were missing limbs. Others were wheelchair-bound or accompanied by medical personnel for the day. “They made it easy to be with them,” he says. “They were all smiles on the ride to Philly. Not an ounce of self-pity from any of them. They’re so full of life and determination.”

    At the stadium, the troops reveled in the game, recalls Bennett. Not even Army’s lopsided loss to Navy could deflate the group’s rollicking mood.

    Afterward, it was back to the train and yet another gourmet meal – heroes get hungry, says Levin – before returning to Walter Reed and Bethesda . “The day was spectacular,” says Levin. “It was all about these kids. It was awesome to be part of it.”

    The most poignant moment for the Levins was when 11 Marines hugged them goodbye, then sang them the Marine Hymn on the platform at Union Station.

    “One of the guys was blind, but he said, ‘I can’t see you, but man, you must be beautiful!’ ” says Bennett. “I got a lump so big in my throat, I couldn’t even answer him.”

    It’s been three weeks, but the Levins and their guests are still feeling the day’s love. “My Christmas came early,” says Levin, who is Jewish and who loves the Christmas season. “I can’t describe the feeling in the air.” Maybe it was hope.

    As one guest wrote in a thank-you note to Bennett and Vivian, “The fond memories generated last Saturday will sustain us all – whatever the future may bring.”

    God bless the Levins.

    And bless the troops, every one.

  • Security challenges, solutions for Turkey and the Arab world

    Security challenges, solutions for Turkey and the Arab world

    LAHCEN HADDAD

    Major security concerns for the greater Middle East have to do with Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its blockade of Gaza, separatism, religious extremism and water issues. Those woes were the main focus of a recent forum of liberal Arab-Turkish dialogue organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Istanbul.

    The challenge with regard to Iran is how to engage the country in such a way as to be able to wean it away from nuclear armament into a constructive engagement in regional stability. The doctrine in this regard should be to respect Iran’s political choices while calling on it to assume its responsibility as a player in the stability of the region. Rather than isolating Iran, engaging it at different levels through both political dialogue and civic interaction among different advocacy groups and civil society organizations could be more instrumental in bringing to the forth its responsibility as a regional player.

    Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its blockade of Gaza has now become an even greater source of instability in the region. Being moderate and more or less neutral, liberals in the region could play an important role in monitoring human rights issues in the occupied territories, advocating for the lifting of the Gaza blockade and the cessation of settlements, and working with civil society organizations on both sides to deal with Palestinian livelihood issues, as a peace process is hopefully being discussed – should Israel care to reach one – in application of the different U.N. resolutions on the issue.

    Separatism is pervasive in the region: Turkey, Iraq, Southern Sudan, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Southern Morocco and Palestine – all of these regions know some of form of ethnically – or religiously-based form of dissidence, generally supported by outside forces or groups. The main concern here is how to contain separatism in those places so that it does not destabilize those countries and the whole region. Any approach to the issue of separatism should be built around advocating for minority rights without at the same time disrupting the territorial integrity of the concerned countries. Promoting freedom, equality, rule of law and democracy all over the region on the one hand and investing resources in poverty alleviation programs in conflict-ridden areas can be effective in mitigating instability and conflict drivers and setting up socio-political contexts for peaceful and democratic resolutions of conflicts and differences.

    Religious extremism (not only Islamic) poses a serious threat to the whole region. How to curb it so that it does not destabilize countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sahel-adjacent countries, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Gulf countries will prove to be a formidable challenge if no serious cooperation between these countries is set up and sustained. In the meantime, countries need to invest in promoting more liberal forms of Islam that is tolerant and respectful of rights and infusing human rights and universal values into the educational systems of almost all the countries of the region.

    Last but not least, water shortage and desertification are and could be sources of instability in so many countries in the region. Water issues between Iraq and Syria on the one hand and Turkey on the other could resurface any time and mar the improving relations (at least between Syria and Turkey). Yemen is already a water-stressed country and a good percentage of its internal conflicts are water-related. Egypt and Sudan could go to war with Africa’s Great Lakes countries should the latter go ahead with their plan to build reservoirs at the upper Nile levels. Desertification is uprooting whole communities in the Sahara and Sahel making them easy targets for al-Qaeda, narcotics and human traffickers’ recruiting efforts. Setting up a regional mechanism to manage water, energy and environmental issues and promote scientific and other solutions is one way to mitigate the effect of water shortage and desertification on the region’s stability.

    Together, Turkey and the Arab countries are in a good position nowadays to work toward durable solutions for some of the security issues the region is facing. The rediscovery of shared history and culture, the existence of enough energy resources, financial assets and emergent human capital in the region, and the emergence of civil society and media organizations are opportunities they could tap into to create a base for positive change and hope for a prosperous and peaceful Middle East and North Africa region.

    Aricle first published at hurriyet news

    * Lahcen Haddad is a strategic studies expert and professor at Mohamed V University in Rabat, Morocco.

  • WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on Secrets, the U.S. and China

    WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on Secrets, the U.S. and China

    By HOWARD CHUA-EOAN – 59 mins ago

    “Secrecy is important for many things,” said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in an interview with TIME over Skype on Monday. Managing editor Richard Stengel had just asked him whether there were instances when secrecy could be an asset in diplomacy or global affairs. WikiLeaks has, of course, grabbed headlines the world over by making public U.S. diplomatic cables that were supposed to stay private and secret, embarrassing the State Department as well as leaders around the world. But secrecy has its place, said Assange. “We keep secret the identity of our sources, as an example, take great pains to do it.” But, he said, secrecy “shouldn’t be used to cover up abuses.” (Watch TIME’s video “WikiLeaks’ Assange on China’s ‘Reform Potential.’”)

    Asked if he wanted to expose the secret dealings of China and Russia the way WikiLeaks has done with America, Assange said, “Yes, indeed. In fact, we believe it is the most closed societies that have the most reform potential.” He sounded heartened, if not overwhelmed, by the response to the megaleak so far. “The media scrutiny and the reaction are so tremendous that it actually eclipses our ability to understand it.” But he believed that there was a shake-up going on, adding that “there is a tremendous rearrangement of viewings about many different countries.” (See why Julian Assange wants Hillary Clinton to resign.)

    In his 36-minute interview with TIME (the full audio will be available soon on TIME.com), Assange explained that exposing abuses can lead to positive change in two ways. When abusive organizations are in the public spotlight, “they have one of two choices.” The first, he said, “is to reform in such a way that they can be proud of their endeavors, and proud to display them to the public.” The second choice, he says, “is to lock down internally and to balkanize, and as a result, of course, cease to be as efficient as they were. To me that is a very good outcome, because organizations can either be efficient, open and honest, or they can be closed, conspiratorial and inefficient.” What he left unsaid but clearly implied was that organizations of the second type eventually fail.

    And where does the U.S. fall between the two categories? He said, “It’s becoming more closed” as a society and its “relative degree of openness … probably peaked in about 1978, and has been on the way down, unfortunately, since.” That, he said, was a result of, among other things, America’s enormous economy, which calibrates power in the U.S. in economic, or as he says, “fiscal,” terms. He points out that, today, China may be easier to reform than the U.S. “Aspects of the Chinese government, [the] Chinese public-security service, appear to be terrified of free speech, and while one might say that means something awful is happening in the country, I actually think that is a very optimistic sign because it means that speech can still cause reform and that the power structure is still inherently political as opposed to fiscal. So journalism and writing are capable of achieving change and that is why Chinese authorities are so scared of it.” On the other hand, in the U.S. and much of the West, he said, “the basic elements of society have been so heavily fiscalized through contractual obligations that political change doesn’t seem to result in economic change, which in other words means that political change doesn’t result in change.” (See how the magazine of al-Qaeda was scooped by WikiLeaks.)

    Assange appears to believe that the U.S. has not become “a much worse-behaved superpower” because its federalism, “this strength of the states,” has been a drag on the combination of the burgeoning power of the central government and a presidency that can only expand its influence by way of foreign affairs. (Given the same economic and geographical advantages as America’s, Russia, he says, would not have turned out as beneficent.) Still, though he cites the Bill of Rights approvingly, he is not overly impressed with the U.S. During the interview, when Stengel asked him about the idea of American exceptionalism, saying, “You seem to believe in American exceptionalism in a negative sense, that America is exceptional only in the harm and damage it does to the world,” Assange said those views “lack the necessary subtlety.” He does conclude, however, that “the U.S. is, I don’t think by world standards, an exception; rather it is a very interesting case both for its abuses and for some of its founding principles.”

    Assange talked about WikiLeaks’ own founding principles – and the evolution of the original conception of how the online conduit for whistle-blowing documents would work. In the beginning, in 2006, given the huge amounts of raw, “quality, important content” the site was providing, he said, “we thought we would have the analytical work done by bloggers and people who wrote Wikipedia articles and so on.” Analyzing secret Chinese data or internal documents from Somalia, he said, was “surely” more interesting than blogging about “what’s on the front page of the New York Times, or about your cat or something.”

    But, he said, “when people write political commentary on blogs or other social media, it is my experience that it is not, with some exceptions, their goal to expose the truth. Rather, it is their goal to position themselves amongst their peers on whatever the issue of the day is. The most effective, the most economical way to do that, is simply to take the story that’s going around, [which] has already created a marketable audience for itself, and say whether they’re in favor of that interpretation or not.” (Comment on this story.)

    Instead, it is the people “funded after a career structure” that incentivizes analysis who are the primary consumers of WikiLeaks. “The heavy lifting – heavy analytical lifting – that is done with our materials is done by us and is done by professional journalists we work with and by professional human-rights activists. It is not done by the broader community.” The social networks come in only after “a story becomes a story,” becoming then “an amplifier of what we are doing.” He doesn’t denigrate the role of social networks or WikiLeaks’ need for them. In the ecological cycle of news on the Web and the world, they have become “a supply of sources for us.”

    Yahoo