The Latest On My Film Plunder, South Africa’s Media Debate, WikiLeaks Latest

November 26th, 2010 - by: danny

William S Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer

I am just back from Iran. Watch for my final report recounting a visit to the former US embassy, the scene of the 1979 hostage drama.

WATCH: Talking about my film, PLUNDER, for LinkTV. org. It is also on Facebook. For more information: PlunderTheCrimeOfOurTime.com.

NYT: Russian TV Personality Skewers Russian TV

MEDIA DEBATE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Part of the fight against apartheid in South Africa involved combating censorship there and self-censorship in the US. My own work with Globalvision’s series, SOUTH AFRICA NOW! was part of that fight.

Today in South Africa, the African National Congress is considering restrictions on a free media promoting a major debate, as well disgust among some veterans of the struggle.

ANC veteran, Pallo Jordan, a senor member of the ANC and former Broadcasting Minister is among those speaking out against gagging the media in a courageous speech challenging his own comrades. Here’s a newspaper report from South Africa.

Media gag ‘a fool’s errand’ – Jordan

ANC veteran Pallo Jordan has sharply criticised the party’s plans for a media tribunal and the Protection of Information Bill, saying attempts to muzzle the modern media were a “fool’s errand”.

By CHANTELLE BENJAMIN

AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) veteran Pallo Jordan has sharply criticised the party’s plans for a media tribunal and the Protection of Information Bill, saying attempts to muzzle the modern media were a “fool’s errand”.

He warned that the party was backing itself into a “lose-lose situation”, with the ANC at risk of losing its credibility as a campaigner for media freedom, and the bill possibly failing a mooted constitutional challenge.

Mr Jordan’s remarks are likely to give the ruling party cause for thought, given his seniority in its ranks and his status as one of its leading intellectuals.

He was speaking at a panel discussion at the weekend hosted by the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel).

In a forthright statement, Mr Jordan, who was originally down to speak on the panel in favour of the bill and tribunal, said those who had come to hear him taking that position might be confused by his remarks. Mr Jordan, who has criticised the print media for its alleged lack of accountability, asked how “the ANC had managed to paint itself into a corner”.

“How did it (the ANC) paint itself into a corner where it can be portrayed as being opposed to media freedom? All the legislation we now have, including the Protection of Access to Information Act, was developed by the ANC.

“Given all these measures, how does one square that with an attempt to control, or pressure, media into a corner? I say it’s a fool’s errand, it cannot be done, given the commercial, technical environment that presently exists in media.

“Think about WikiLeaks and documents on the Nato coalition’s activities in Afghanistan or Iraq.

“Given the policies we (the ANC) have in place and the laws we have in place, if the movement pursues this path it can only result in a lose-lose situation.

“Those who want to rubbish us will have every right to do so,” he told the gathering.
At the ANC’s national general council (NGC) in Durban in September, it was agreed that a team of academics and lawyers would make submissions to Parliament on its behalf about creating a statutory media appeals tribunal.

The NGC’s commission on media diversity and communications chaired by Mr Jordan oversaw the removal of some of the more repressive measures put forward by the provinces, such as annual registration of journalists. But it agreed that the existing self-regulatory system of the press ombudsman and Press Council was ineffective and needed to be strengthened to balance the rights of the media and those of citizens.

Mr Jordan, who was broadcasting minister after the 1994 elections, challenged Nadel members to engage the government to help it “to achieve its objectives but without contravening the constitution”.

He criticised constitutional lawyers, saying they should have stepped into the breach when the media tribunal and information bill were first put on the table, not to be critical but to ensure the legislation was a co-operative work.

State law adviser Enver Daniels, also on the panel, defended the Protection of Information Bill, saying the intention was to make information more accessible by classifying less information – this bill has only three levels of classification instead of the four that the previous act has.

He said it was also intended to replace the Protection of Information Act, which retained features of the apartheid era. Mr Daniels said the public had recourse to the Protection of Access to Information Act to gain access to information.

Mohamed Junaid Husain, of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, said the proposed bill was more restrictive than legislation in the US, UK or France.

He said the bill makes provision for documents to be classified for 20 years and then possibly classified again for another 20 years.

“That is the longest jurisdiction I have ever heard of.

“Three generations of South Africans may not know what is in those documents.”
He did not dispute the government’s right to classify documents, but said the bill should contain a public interest clause to balance the power given to officials.

There ought to be an adjudication body to decide on whether a document should be declassified.
“At the end of the day, the decision may lie with the official who classified the document in the first place, which is unacceptable. The bill makes an (official) a judge in his own cause,” Mr Husain said.

Latest WIkileaks: Documents Show Washington Supported Terrorist Grouos-Sydney Morning Herald

JERUSALEM: Several of the documents set to be published by WikiLeaks this weekend are believed to show the US has been helping Turkey’s Kurdish separatist movement the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group in Turkey, the US, the European Union and Australia.

The claim is reported in the London Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat.

Advertisement: Story continues below
Another document is believed to charge Turkey with providing indirect assistance to al-Qaeda. It is believed the document will say Turkey rendered this assistance by failing to control the movement of people across its border with Iraq.

WikiLeaks is planning to publish up to 400,000 sensitive cables from the past five years that include media reports, talks with politicians, government officials and journalists, and evaluations and various analyses by American diplomats regarding their host countries.

A report in The Jerusalem Post said the US military documents referred to the PKK as ”warriors for freedom and Turkish citizens” and said the US had set free arrested PKK members in Iraq.

The documents also say US forces in Iraq have given weapons to the PKK.

Another Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported that Israeli officials were apprehensive about the WikiLeaks material.

Haaretz reported that the US embassy in Tel Aviv had told Israel’s Foreign Ministry of the imminent disclosure of sensitive information by WikiLeaks.

The Americans said they wanted Israel to know so it would not be surprised and would be prepared for publicity that might cause embarrassment.

Haaretz said if cables from the US embassy were published, it could be embarrassing because they involve internal correspondence between US diplomats that might not reflect the position of the White House.

A senior Israeli official familiar with the material, who asked to remain anonymous, said it included diplomatic cables sent to Washington from US embassies throughout the world.

The official said the US embassy said the documents were not highly classified.

”The Americans said they view the leak very seriously,” the official said. ”They don’t know when they will be released on the internet and what exactly they say, but they didn’t want us to read about it in the newspapers.”

Kurt Hoyer, spokesman for the US embassy in Tel Aviv, neither confirmed nor denied that the embassy had conveyed a message relating to the matter to the Prime Minister’s Bureau and the Foreign Ministry.

In two previous releases of leaked US government documents, in July and October, WikiLeaks provided the documents in advance to The New York Times, The Guardian in London and and Der Spiegel in Germany on condition that they publish their stories simultaneously.

The first leak contained thousands of military field reports on the war in Afghanistan; the second was a similar but larger file on the Iraq war.

Petition to Support Julian Assange

By Ralph Lopez, WarIsACrime.org

The Bradley Manning case is approaching. When we think of Bradley Manning, many of us tend to think of either a Wikileaks document dump or the attack in the video in which two Reuters reporters are killed after a group of Iraqi men are fired upon by an Apache attack helipcopter. Already dismissed as justifiable by many due to the presence of a rocket launcher found on the scene, these associations may be losing the essence of Manning’s actions and his strongest defense. Manning was not shocked by the initial attack on the Iraqi men, and wrote to Adrian Lamo:

“At first glance it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter…No big deal … about two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd with the van thing, and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer’s directory. So I looked into it.”"

Unlike the intial attack, the follow-up attack captured in the Wikileaks video, “the van thing,” was a strictly illegal and prohibited attack upon the wounded during wartime, which is why it was being buried in the military Judge Advocate General’s office (JAG,) which is a military prosecutor. There is no other explanation for the video being stored there. It seals the case, in one clear, specific, and identifiable instance, that Bradley Manning was not committing a crime. He was reporting one.
Manning virtually predicts that given he will probably be held incommunicado and without a chance to speak for himself as he is tried in the media, his biggest problem to be to tell his side of the story. Adrian Lamo asked him in an email: “What would you do if your role [with] Wikileaks seemed in danger of being blown?”

Manning answered:

“Try and figure out how I could get my side of the story out, before everything was twisted around to make me look like Nidal Hassan (the Fort Hood shooter.)

Humane treatment of the wounded is one of the oldest laws of war. It came into being after a lifelong personal campaign by Henri Dunant, after the Battle of Solferino in 1859, during the Napoleonic Wars, after Dunant witnessed the horror of 40,000 wounded men dying upon the field. Dunant was founder of the Red Cross, and though he finished out his old age in ascetic poverty, he never lacked for people eager to care for him or take him into their villages across Europe. A poor but educated man, Dunant convinced the royal houses of Europe that a law of the wounded was in their own best interests. Observers remarked in later wars that wounded Frenchmen were often treated like royalty by all sides.
Article 12 of the Geneva Convention of 1864 states that,

“…Members of the armed forces and other persons (…) who are wounded or sick, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances. They shall be treated humanely and cared for by the Party to the conflict…Any attempts upon their lives, or violence to their persons, shall be strictly prohibited; in particular, they shall not be murdered or exterminated…”.

The law extends to those attempting to evacuate them, to whom it is required that assistance be given if possible. The definition of wounded and sick for the purpose of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) is:

“…persons, whether military or civilians, who, because of trauma, disease or other physical or mental disorder or disability, are in need of medical assistance or care and who refrain from any act of hostility.”

Also from a Marine Corp study guide,Military Studies:
“Marines do not attack medical personnel, facilities, or equipment. Both friendly and enemy medical personnel are to be encouraged to come to the battlefield in safety to care for the wounded combatants.”

I have perused Internet miltary sites, and the results are instructive. Although some shock at the first attack is expressed, most commenters identifiying themselves as Iraq and other war combat vets express little outrage at the first attack. But with respect to “the van thing,” the words come up over and over, often with little elaboration: “war crime.”

In the second attack a man is seen crawling upon the ground after the first attack, partially disemboweled, when a van pulls up with men who attempt to evacuate him. The Apache gunner in his bloodlust requests and receives permission to open fire, muttering the words “just pick up a weapon,” even though no weapons are anywhere visible near the crawling man. It is in this attack that two children who are in the van are wounded, whereupon the gunner remarks “that’s what they get for bringing their kids to the battle.” These are the children saved by Spc. Ethan McCord, who runs with them to a Bradley vehicle after another soldier, upon discovering them, runs away vomiting.
It is critical that Bradley’s side of the story get out.

Please urge his defense team to point out the clear war crime, and post this widely.

And This:
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Funds North Korean Regime

Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org.

The News Dissector