Wikileaks founder Julian Assange wrote this Op-Ed for The Australian today: Key lines: * WikiLeaks is fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public. * The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth. * (My idea is) to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth. * People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. * The Gillard government (Australia) is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed.
Text follows:
IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”
His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.
I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.
These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia , was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?
Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.
People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.
If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.
WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.
Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be “taken out” by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.
And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.
We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.
Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.
Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?
It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan . NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.
But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:
The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.
Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.
Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.
The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.
In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth. Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
lundi 6 décembre 2010
Lebanese communications minister Marwan Hamadeh told the US that the network covered Palestinian camps, Hezbollah training camps and penetrated deep into Christian areas. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPA Lebanon's western-backed government warned its friends that "Iran telecom" was taking over the country two years ago when it uncovered a secret communications network across the country used by Hezbollah, according to a US state department cable.
The discovery in April 2008 came against a background of mounting tensions between the Beirut government and the Iranian-backed Shia organisation, which escalated into street fighting in the capital just weeks later.
The US document, classified secret/noforn (not for foreign eyes) exposes deep regional and international concerns about the volatile situation in Lebanon amid fears of a new clash with Israel following the 2006 war.
Information on the Hezbollah fibre optics network, allegedly financed by Iran, was immediately passed to the US, Saudi Arabia and others by Lebanese ministers. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy was "stunned" by the discovery, the US embassy reported.
The Lebanese are bound to assume that the information also went to Israel, for whom Hezbollah is a significant enemy and priority intelligence target.
The US cable is one of several that have been published in Beirut by the leftwing al-Akhbar newspaper which has apparently been leaked as part of the WikiLeaks cache obtained by the Guardian, the New York Times and three continental European publications.
Al-Akhbar has highlighted contacts between the March 14 movement led by the current prime minister Saad al-Hariri, the US and the Saudis, prompting denials or defensive reactions from those named.
Marwan Hamadeh, the Lebanese minister of communications, warned the US charge d'affaires of the risks involved after Hezbollah indicated it would see any action against the telecoms network as "equal to an Israeli act of aggression".
Hamadeh also reported interference with Lebanese mobile communications by Syria and Israel.
The discovery of the telecoms system was linked to the demand, anchored in UN resolution 1701 but never implemented, that Hezbollah disarm after the 2006 war with Israel. Hezbollah told Lebanese intelligence that the communications network was "a key part of its arsenal".
Hamadeh told the Americans that the network ran from Beirut, into the south below the Litani river and back up through the Bekaa valley to the far north, covering Palestinian camps, Hezbollah training camps and penetrating deep into Christian areas. He cited the Iranian Fund for the Reconstruction of Lebanon as the source of the funding. This group had been rebuilding roads and bridges since the 2006 war and had been accused of installing telecommunications lines in parallel with new roads.
Other leaked US cables underline the nervousness of the Lebanese government over the fibre-optics affair: "A … public accusation against Hezbollah would beg the same question as to why the government of Lebanon did not remove Hezbollah's tanks, and entailed military risks for the government," the embassy reported later.
"Hamadeh highlights the system as a strategic victory for Iran since it creates an important Iranian outpost in Lebanon, bypassing Syria," Washington was told. "He sees the value for the Iranians as strategic, rather than technical or economic. The value for Hizballah is the final step in creating a nation state. Hizballah now has an army and weapons; a television station; an education system; hospitals; social services; a financial system; and a telecommunications system."
Hamadeh has described the US cable quoting him as "a story full of slanders and fabrications" and declined to comment further to Lebanese media.
Lebanon's defence minister, Elias Murr – reported in other leaked documents as telling US officials that the army would not involve itself in a future Israeli attack on Lebanon – said the allegations sought to cause unrest. "The information posted by WikiLeaks is not complete and is not accurate," said an aide, George Soulage. "The aim behind this is to sow discord in Lebanon." Ian Blackguardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 December 2010
The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, offered a deal which was not agreed with Egypt over al-Jazeera, US embassy cables claim. Photograph: GettyQatar is using the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera as a bargaining chip in foreign policy negotiations by adapting its coverage to suit other foreign leaders and offering to cease critical transmissions in exchange for major concessions, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks claim. The memos flatly contradict al-Jazeera's insistence that it is editorially independent despite being heavily subsidised by the Gulf state. They will also be intensely embarrassing to Qatar, which last week controversially won the right to host the 2022 World Cup after presenting itself as the most open and modern Middle Eastern state. In the past, the emir of Qatar has publicly refused US requests to use his influence to temper al-Jazeera's reporting. But a cable written in November 2009 predicted that the station could be used "as a bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries, particularly those soured by al-Jazeera's broadcasts, including the United States" over the next three years. Doha-based al-Jazeera was launched in 1996 and has become the most watched satellite television station in the Middle East. It has been seen by many as relatively free and open in its coverage of the region, but government control over its reporting appears to US diplomats to be so direct that they said the channel's output had become "part of our bilateral discussions – as it has been to favourable effect between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and other countries". In February, the US embassy reported to Washington how "relations [between Qatar and Saudi Arabia] are generally improving after Qatar toned down criticism of the Saudi royal family on al-Jazeera". In July 2009, the US embassy said the channel "has proved itself a useful tool for the station's political masters". In one despatch the US ambassador, Joseph LeBaron, reported that the Qatari prime minister Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani had joked in an interview that Al-Jazeera had caused the Gulf state such headaches that it might be better to sell it. But the ambassador remarked: "Such statements must not be taken at face value." Although Le Baron noted that the station's coverage of events in the Middle East was "relatively free and open" he concluded: "Despite GOQ protestations to the contrary, Al Jazeera remains one of Qatar's most valuable political and diplomatic tools." However, US allegations of manipulation of al-Jazeera's content for political ends appear to contradict the Qatari stance of supporting a free press. "The Qatari government claims to champion press freedom elsewhere, but generally does not tolerate it at home," the US embassy said after the French director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom resigned in June 2009, citing restrictions on the centre's freedom to operate. In a clear example of the regional news channel being exploited for political ends, the Doha embassy claimed Qatar's PM, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani (HBJ), told the US senator John Kerry that he had proposed a bargain with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, which involved stopping broadcasts in Egypt in exchange for a change in Cairo's position on Israel-Palestinian negotiations. "HBJ had told Mubarak 'we would stop al-Jazeera for a year' if he agreed in that span of time to deliver a lasting settlement for the Palestinians," according to a confidential cable from the US embassy in Doha in February. "Mubarak said nothing in response, according to HBJ." The US has benefitted, too. "Anecdotal evidence suggests, and former al-Jazeera board members have affirmed, that the United States has been portrayed more positively since the advent of the Obama administration," a cable in November 2009 said. "We expect that trend to continue and to further develop as US-Qatari relations improve." In 2001 the emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, refused a US request to stop al-Jazeera giving so much airtime to Osama bin Laden and other anti-American figures, saying: "Parliamentary life requires you to have a free and credible media, and that is what we are trying to do. "Al-Jazeera is one of the most widely watched [TV stations] in the Arab world because of its editorial independence." The Gulf state has frequently held up al-Jazeera as evidence of its relative openness. The embassy of Qatar in London declined to comment on the story tonight. Attempts to reach al-Jazeera for comment failed.
Un autre article provenant du Guardian écrit par Damian Carrington avec des informations fournies par wikileaks :
A Greenpeace activist in a hot air ballon ahead of the current UN climate summit in Cancún. WikiLeaks cables expose US use of espionage before the 2009 Copenhagen summit. Photograph: Luis Perez/AFP/Getty Images Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.
Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries' negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental "treaty circumvention" and deals between nations.
But intelligence gathering was not just one way. On 19 June 2009, the state department sent a cable detailing a "spear phishing" attack on the office of the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing. Five people received emails, personalised to look as though they came from the National Journal. An attached file contained malicious code that would give complete control of the recipient's computer to a hacker. While the attack was unsuccessful, the department's cyber threat analysis division noted: "It is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist."
The Beijing talks failed to lead to a global deal at Copenhagen. But the US, the world's biggest historical polluter and long isolated as a climate pariah, had something to cling to. The Copenhagen accord, hammered out in the dying hours but not adopted into the UN process, offered to solve many of the US's problems.
The accord turns the UN's top-down, unanimous approach upside down, with each nation choosing palatable targets for greenhouse gas cuts. It presents a far easier way to bind in China and other rapidly growing countries than the UN process. But the accord cannot guarantee the global greenhouse gas cuts needed to avoid dangerous warming. Furthermore, it threatens to circumvent the UN's negotiations on extending the Kyoto protocol, in which rich nations have binding obligations. Those objections have led many countries – particularly the poorest and most vulnerable – to vehemently oppose the accord.
Getting as many countries as possible to associate themselves with the accord strongly served US interests, by boosting the likelihood it would be officially adopted. A diplomatic offensive was launched. Diplomatic cables flew thick and fast between the end of Copenhagen in December 2009 and late February 2010, when the leaked cables end.
Some countries needed little persuading. The accord promised $30bn (£19bn) in aid for the poorest nations hit by global warming they had not caused. Within two weeks of Copenhagen, the Maldives foreign minister, Ahmed Shaheed, wrote to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, expressing eagerness to back it.
By 23 February 2010, the Maldives' ambassador-designate to the US, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the US deputy climate change envoy, Jonathan Pershing, his country wanted "tangible assistance", saying other nations would then realise "the advantages to be gained by compliance" with the accord.
A diplomatic dance ensued. "Ghafoor referred to several projects costing approximately $50m (£30m). Pershing encouraged him to provide concrete examples and costs in order to increase the likelihood of bilateral assistance."
The Maldives were unusual among developing countries in embracing the accord so wholeheartedly, but other small island nations were secretly seen as vulnerable to financial pressure. Any linking of the billions of dollars of aid to political support is extremely controversial – nations most threatened by climate change see the aid as a right, not a reward, and such a link as heretical. But on 11 February, Pershing met the EU climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, in Brussels, where she told him, according to a cable, "the Aosis [Alliance of Small Island States] countries 'could be our best allies' given their need for financing".
The pair were concerned at how the $30bn was to be raised and Hedegaard raised another toxic subject – whether the US aid would be all cash. She asked if the US would need to do any "creative accounting", noting some countries such as Japan and the UK wanted loan guarantees, not grants alone, included, a tactic she opposed. Pershing said "donors have to balance the political need to provide real financing with the practical constraints of tight budgets", reported the cable.
Along with finance, another treacherous issue in the global climate negotiations, currently continuing in Cancún, Mexico, is trust that countries will keep their word. Hedegaard asks why the US did not agree with China and India on what she saw as acceptable measures to police future emissions cuts. "The question is whether they will honour that language," the cable quotes Pershing as saying.
Trust is in short supply on both sides of the developed-developing nation divide. On 2 February 2009, a cable from Addis Ababa reports a meeting between the US undersecretary of state Maria Otero and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who leads the African Union's climate change negotiations.
The confidential cable records a blunt US threat to Zenawi: sign the accord or discussion ends now. Zenawi responds that Ethiopia will support the accord, but has a concern of his own: that a personal assurance from Barack Obama on delivering the promised aid finance is not being honoured.
US determination to seek allies against its most powerful adversaries – the rising economic giants of Brazil, South Africa, India, China (Basic) – is set out in another cable from Brussels on 17 February reporting a meeting between the deputy national security adviser, Michael Froman, Hedegaard and other EU officials.
Froman said the EU needed to learn from Basic's skill at impeding US and EU initiatives and playing them off against each in order "to better handle third country obstructionism and avoid future train wrecks on climate".
Hedegaard is keen to reassure Froman of EU support, revealing a difference between public and private statements. "She hoped the US noted the EU was muting its criticism of the US, to be constructive," the cable said. Hedegaard and Froman discuss the need to "neutralise, co-opt or marginalise unhelpful countries including Venezuela and Bolivia", before Hedegaard again links financial aid to support for the accord, noting "the irony that the EU is a big donor to these countries". Later, in April, the US cut aid to Bolivia and Ecuador, citing opposition to the accord.
Any irony is clearly lost on the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, according to a 9 February cable from La Paz. The Danish ambassador to Bolivia, Morten Elkjaer, tells a US diplomat that, at the Copenhagen summit, "Danish prime minister Rasmussen spent an unpleasant 30 minutes with Morales, during which Morales thanked him for [$30m a year in] bilateral aid, but refused to engage on climate change issues."
After the Copenhagen summit, further linking of finance and aid with political support appears. Dutch officials, initially rejecting US overtures to back the accord, make a startling statement on 25 January. According to a cable, the Dutch climate negotiator Sanne Kaasjager "has drafted messages for embassies in capitals receiving Dutch development assistance to solicit support [for the accord]. This is an unprecedented move for the Dutch government, which traditionally recoils at any suggestion to use aid money as political leverage." Later, however, Kaasjager rows back a little, saying: "The Netherlands would find it difficult to make association with the accord a condition to receive climate financing."
Perhaps the most audacious appeal for funds revealed in the cables is from Saudi Arabia, the world's second biggest oil producer and one of the 25 richest countries in the world. A secret cable sent on 12 February records a meeting between US embassy officials and lead climate change negotiator Mohammad al-Sabban. "The kingdom will need time to diversify its economy away from petroleum, [Sabban] said, noting a US commitment to help Saudi Arabia with its economic diversification efforts would 'take the pressure off climate change negotiations'."
The Saudis did not like the accord, but were worried they had missed a trick. The assistant petroleum minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told US officials that he had told his minister Ali al-Naimi that Saudi Arabia had "missed a real opportunity to submit 'something clever', like India or China, that was not legally binding but indicated some goodwill towards the process without compromising key economic interests".
The cables obtained by WikiLeaks finish at the end of February 2010. Today, 116 countries have associated themselves with the accord. Another 26 say they intend to associate. That total, of 140, is at the upper end of a 100-150 country target revealed by Pershing in his meeting with Hedegaard on 11 February.
The 140 nations represent almost 75% of the 193 countries that are parties to the UN climate change convention and, accord supporters like to point out, are responsible for well over 80% of current global greenhouse gas emissions.
At the mid-point of the major UN climate change negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, there have already been flare-ups over how funding for climate adaptation is delivered. The biggest shock has been Japan's announcement that it will not support an extension of the existing Kyoto climate treaty. That gives a huge boost to the accord. US diplomatic wheeling and dealing may, it seems, be bearing fruit.
WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to five international media organisations. Photograph: WikiLeaks WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet.
The whistleblowers site, which has been publishing leaked US embassy cables, was forced to switch domain names to WikiLeaks.ch yesterday after the US host of its main website, WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug following mounting political pressure.
The site's new Swiss host, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.
The reassurances come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing "illegal activity". France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.
The Swiss Pirate Party, which registered the WikiLeaks.ch domain name earlier this year on behalf of the site, said Switch had reassured the party that it would not block the site.
An email sent by Denis Simonet, president of the Swiss Pirate Party, to international members of the liberal political group said: "Some minutes ago I got good news: Switch, the registrar for .ch domains, told us that there is no reason to block wikileaks.ch."
Laurence Kaye, leader of the UK-based Pirate Party, tonight told the Guardian: "International Pirate Parties now have an integral role in allowing access to WikiLeaks. I wish some of our other politicians had the same guts.
"We support the WikiLeaks project as access to information is the prerequisite for an informed and engaged democracy."
WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to the Guardian and four other international media organisations. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, dropped the site from its servers on Thursday after being contacted by staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the US Senate's homeland security committee.
Everydns.net, the site's US hosting provider, yesterday forced the site offline for the third time in under a week. A series of "distributed denial of attacks" by unknown online activists still bring the site intermittently to its knees.
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, described the decision as "privatisation of state censorship" in the US. Everydns.net said the attacks – which have been going on all week – threatened "the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites".
Toujours dans le Guardian, l'article de Ewen MacAskill : China's "newly pugnacious" foreign policy is "losing friends worldwide", the US ambassador to Beijing argued in a cable last February.
European diplomats were "most vocal", although Indian and Japanese counterparts voiced similar complaints, Jon Huntsman wrote. In other dispatches US diplomats quote unhappy African officials.
In his cable, entitled "Stomp around and carry a small stick: China's new 'global assertiveness' raises hackles, but has more form than substance", he accused Beijing of "muscle-flexing, triumphalism and assertiveness", but added that some observers saw it as rhetoric designed to appeal to Chinese public opinion. "Numerous third-country diplomats have complained to us that dealing with China has become more difficult in the past year," Huntsman reported. His examples included:
■ A British diplomat saying that Chinese officials' behaviour at the Copenhagen climate change summit was "shocking" and so rude and arrogant that the UK and French complained formally.
■ The Indian ambassador to Beijing requesting closer co-operation with the US because of "China's more aggressive approach".
■ Japanese diplomats complaining that officials were "aggressive and difficult" during summit preparations.
■ Another Japanese official describing rising tensions in the East China Sea, saying that "the increased aggressiveness of Chinese 'coastguard' and naval units… had provoked 'many dangerous encounters' with Japanese civilian and self-defence force ships".
The official said Japan had not reported all the incidents. The issue became public in the autumn when Japan arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat for ramming a coastguard vessel near disputed islands.
The cable refers to another dispute that later broke into the open. A Norwegian diplomat said Oslo was unhappy with the trend of bilateral relations, citing the lack of progress in human rights discussions and referring to the jailing of writer Liu Xiaobo. China reacted angrily when Norway's Nobel committee gave the peace prize to Liu recently.
The main tensions appear to be with China's neighbours or established western powers. In several cables US diplomats note China's growing influence in Latin America and Africa. One cable notes the Kenyan ambassador stressing the benefits of China's role on the continent and saying Africa has nothing to gain if the US and China co-operate.
Juliu Ole Sunkuli "claimed that Africa was better off thanks to China's practical, bilateral approach to development assistance and was concerned that this would be changed by 'western' interference… Sunkuli said Africans were frustrated by western insistence on capacity building, which translated, in his eyes, into conferences and seminars. They instead preferred China's focus on infrastructure and tangible projects."
Other cables suggested some African diplomats felt "a degree of suspicion and resentment" about China's role. A Nigerian official suggested poorer countries were "coerced" into aid-for-resources deals. Elsewhere a Moroccan diplomat commented: "China will never play the role of a global leader if it treats its trade partners so poorly."
Assessing US-China relations at the start of 2009, the then US ambassador to China, Clark Randt, saw growing similarities in relations with the rest of the world. "By the end of the next 30 years China should no longer be able to portray itself as the representative of lesser developed countries. This does not mean that it will necessarily identify with the more developed, mainly western countries; it well might choose to pursue some uniquely Chinese path… Even so, China's growing position as a nation increasingly distinct from the less developed world may expand our common interests." It was possible China "will come to be identified by the average citizen in less developed countries not as 'one of us' but as 'one of them'."
Je suis tellement déçue de l'attitude d'Amazon et maintenant de la compagnie PayPal dans l'affaire Wikileaks.
"The backlash against WikiLeaks intensifed today after payments site PayPal revealed it had frozen WikiLeaks' account, saying it was being used to "encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity".
The company, owned by auction website eBay, revealed it had cut access for donations to WikiLeaks amid unsubstantiated speculation that the decision may have been inspired by heavy political pressure. Last week Amazon.com stopped hosting WikiLeaks only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.
The latest action is likely to harm Wikileaks because PayPal is an important avenue for donations and arguably the most secure and convenient way to support the organisation.
Paypal's decision comes a day after Swedish authorities, who want to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 39, over sex offence allegations, issued a fresh arrest warrant to British police. However, amid speculation Assange is about to be picked up, his lawyer said it could be weeks before the Australian, who is understood to be in south-east England, is arrested.
Mark Stephens said British police were still assessing the Swedish warrant and were in a position to contact Assange. "The new warrant has to go to Interpol and to Scotland Yard. Anything quicker than 10 days and you've got to think that Julian Assange is getting special attention.
He also said that if the latest Swedish arrest warrant was not valid – the first was rejected last week for being incomplete – he would get the "court to quash it".
Stephens said: "In these circumstances there is every likelihood of that occurring. Given the deficiencies in the process, it is going to be difficult for them to produce a warrant which is valid under international law. The process has been so comprehensively unfair. The police won't get in touch with me until they get a warrant they think they can get through."
He said Scotland Yard had been aware of Assange's whereabouts since September when he arrived from Sweden after the allegations against him surfaced in August. Since then, Assange has repeatedly attempted to contact the Swedish prosecutors, even offering to meet at the Swedish embassy in London to discuss the allegations against him.
"When I spoke to the police I think they were pretty surprised with the problems we had getting in touch them [Swedish prosecutors]. I told the chief inspector that my client been trying to get in touch with the prosecutor since August. Usually people are running in the opposite direction".
Stephens said that on a wider point it was important to remember that WikiLeaks was not a "one man show" and that despite the mounting attacks against the site it had a large team dedicated to its survival."
( article from The Guardian )
