By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 20, 2010
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Central Bank sharply reduced its purchases of bonds last week from vulnerable governments like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, despite pressure to do more to help fight the Continent’s crippling debt crisis.
In the week ended on Friday, the central bank spent 603 million euros ($793 million) on government bonds, down sharply from 2.667 billion euros a week earlier, data released Monday showed.
The central bank started its bond-buying program in May, after extending a rescue loan of 110 billion euros to Greece. Buying bonds stabilizes their prices, taking financing pressure off the issuing governments and the banks that hold them.
Purchases were low during the summer, but increased sharply in the first two weeks of December, after a 67.5 billion-euro bailout for Ireland failed to contain turmoil on government bond markets. The increased purchases were widely credited for calming markets in recent weeks.
European policy makers have been putting pressure on the Frankfurt-based central bank to play a more active role as they struggle to prevent the region’s debt crisis from claiming a third victim.
Since May, the central bank has spent 72.5 billion euros on government bonds, a minuscule amount compared with the Federal Reserve’s $600 billion bond-buying program.
On Friday, European Union leaders decided against new measures to tackle the debt crisis, such as increasing the euro zone’s 750 billion-euro financial backstop or creating pan-European bonds.
The central bank signaled last week that it was growing uncomfortable with the risk government bonds were adding to its balance sheet — it asked national central banks to almost double its capital base.
Many analysts have warned that Portugal and the much larger Spain might have trouble handling their debt load, potentially overwhelming the euro zone’s existing financial backstops and endangering the currency area as a whole.
21/12 With Eye on Risks, Bank of Japan Keeps Rates Low
By REUTERS
Published: December 21, 2010
TOKYO (Reuters) — The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged on Tuesday, but noted weakening factory output and business sentiment in what markets saw as an assurance that it was aware of risks to growth that could require more easing.
The governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaaki Shirakawa, apparently seeking to soothe jittery bond markets, said Tuesday that he would carefully examine how increases in Japanese yields could affect the economy, for example by causing losses on commercial banks’ huge debt holdings.
But he stressed that Japanese bond yields were not rising as much as long-term rates in the Unites States and Europe and were merely taking a cue from American Treasuries.
“In Japan, long-term interest rates have not risen as rapidly as in developed countries in the West,” Mr. Shirakawa told a news conference.
The central bank’s decision to keep its rates at a range of zero to 0.1 percent had been widely anticipated.
With rising share prices and the yen’s retreat from a 15-year high that was reached last month, analysts saw little reason for the bank to act again after easing policy just two months ago. At its October meeting, the central bank promised to keep interest rates effectively at zero until the end of deflation was in sight. It also set up a 5 trillion yen ($60 billion) fund to buy assets ranging from government bonds to corporate debt.
Bank policy makers have also said that increasing the size of the fund would be a clear option if the anticipated slowdown proved deeper than expected.
Mr. Shirakawa stressed that the latest easing steps had been effective in pushing down longer-term money market rates, and stuck to his view that Japan’s economy would resume a moderate recovery early next year after a brief lull.
The bank maintained its general view that Japan, the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China, was showing signs of moderate recovery, but toned down its language on output, saying it had declined slightly and was not “moving sideways.” The bank also warned that business sentiment had been “somewhat weak,” signaling that it saw its latest Tankan survey, an economic survey of Japanese businesses, as offering negative signals for the economy.
Recent increases in Japanese long-term interest rates have created a headache for the central bank, which aims to push down one- to two-year yields with the new asset-buying scheme.
Published: December 21, 2010
TOKYO (Reuters) — The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged on Tuesday, but noted weakening factory output and business sentiment in what markets saw as an assurance that it was aware of risks to growth that could require more easing.
The governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaaki Shirakawa, apparently seeking to soothe jittery bond markets, said Tuesday that he would carefully examine how increases in Japanese yields could affect the economy, for example by causing losses on commercial banks’ huge debt holdings.
But he stressed that Japanese bond yields were not rising as much as long-term rates in the Unites States and Europe and were merely taking a cue from American Treasuries.
“In Japan, long-term interest rates have not risen as rapidly as in developed countries in the West,” Mr. Shirakawa told a news conference.
The central bank’s decision to keep its rates at a range of zero to 0.1 percent had been widely anticipated.
With rising share prices and the yen’s retreat from a 15-year high that was reached last month, analysts saw little reason for the bank to act again after easing policy just two months ago. At its October meeting, the central bank promised to keep interest rates effectively at zero until the end of deflation was in sight. It also set up a 5 trillion yen ($60 billion) fund to buy assets ranging from government bonds to corporate debt.
Bank policy makers have also said that increasing the size of the fund would be a clear option if the anticipated slowdown proved deeper than expected.
Mr. Shirakawa stressed that the latest easing steps had been effective in pushing down longer-term money market rates, and stuck to his view that Japan’s economy would resume a moderate recovery early next year after a brief lull.
The bank maintained its general view that Japan, the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China, was showing signs of moderate recovery, but toned down its language on output, saying it had declined slightly and was not “moving sideways.” The bank also warned that business sentiment had been “somewhat weak,” signaling that it saw its latest Tankan survey, an economic survey of Japanese businesses, as offering negative signals for the economy.
Recent increases in Japanese long-term interest rates have created a headache for the central bank, which aims to push down one- to two-year yields with the new asset-buying scheme.
22/12 U.S. Says China Fund Breaks Rules
Doug Kanter for The New York Times
Employees work on wind turbines at a Gamesa factory in Tianjin, China. Washington is challenging a government fund in China that awards grants to makers of wind power equipment. By SEWELL CHAN
Published: December 22, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration filed a case against China with the World Trade Organization on Wednesday, siding with an American labor union, the United Steelworkers, in accusing Beijing of illegally subsidizing the production of wind power equipment.
The decision is the second time in less than four months that the United States has accused China of violating world trade rules.
It represents an escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China over clean energy, viewed by the Obama administration as a frontier in which American companies are struggling to remain competitive.
The United States is challenging a special Chinese government fund that awards grants to makers of wind power equipment. The Americans say the fund provides subsidies that are illegal under W.T.O. rules because the grants appear to be contingent on manufacturers using parts made in China.
“Import substitution subsidies are particularly harmful and inherently trade distorting, which is why they are expressly prohibited under W.T.O. rules,” Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, said in a statement. “These subsidies effectively operate as a barrier to U.S. exports to China. Opening markets by removing barriers to our exports is a core element of the president’s trade strategy.”
China’s Ministry of Commerce issued a brief statement on its Web site early Thursday afternoon in Beijing, defending the country’s policies but providing few specifics. “Measures to develop wind energy in China are conducive to energy conservation and environmental protection as well as an important means of achieving sustainable development, and are consistent with W.T.O. rules,” the statement said.
The individual grants available under the Chinese program range from $6.7 million to $22.5 million. Chinese makers of wind turbines and associated parts can receive multiple grants as the size of the wind turbine models increases.
Total subsidies under the program since 2008 could amount to several hundred million dollars, according to Mr. Kirk’s office.
The United Steelworkers, which had protested the Chinese wind power fund as part of a larger, 5,800-page trade complaint it filed with the American government on Sept. 9, said the administration’s decision was only a first step in addressing a “vast web of protectionist policies” by Beijing.
“The goal is not litigation,” Leo W. Gerard, the union’s president, said in a statement. “It’s to end their practices.”
The accusation on Wednesday is the first step in the W.T.O.’s process for settling disputes.. If China and the United States cannot reach a solution through consultations, the United States may request the establishment of a W.T.O. dispute settlement panel.
Members of Congress who have been pushing for a bolder stance against China on trade, currency and other commercial matters, applauded the decision to file the case.
“The United States needs to take a more assertive approach to China’s mercantilist policies, and the administration’s action today is a welcome step in the right direction,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees trade.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement that China was on track to make half of the world’s wind turbines and solar panels and urged the administration to make trade enforcement a priority.
“The United States cannot replace its dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on clean energy technology made in China,” he said. “American manufacturing must lead the way — and to do this, they need a level playing field.”
The action grows out of an investigation Mr. Kirk’s office initiated on Oct. 15 in response to the Steelworkers’ case, which covered a range of practices in the clean-energy sector, including prohibited subsidies, export restraints and discrimination against foreign companies and imported goods.The case, known as a Section 301 complaint under the Trade Act of 1974, has been the subject of several talks between Chinese and American trade officials.
After two days of meetings last week in Washington, part of an annual forum known as the United States-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, China agreed to lift one barrier to foreign developers seeking to build wind farms there. The Chinese government will allow overseas experience in wind farm development, and not just experience in China, to qualify the developers for Chinese projects.
But several other barriers remain: foreign developers are banned from offshore projects for what China describes asnational security reasons, are not allowed to borrow as much money as domestic developers and are prohibited from selling carbon credits from their wind farms.
Mr. Kirk said his office would continue to investigate other parts of the Steelworkers’ complaint but was not planning additional filings under Section 301, which authorizes the president to take “all appropriate action,” including retaliation, against practices by foreign governments that violate international trade agreements or discriminate against American commerce.
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“We will continue to work closely with the U.S.W. and other stakeholders in the months ahead on the remaining allegations,” Mr. Kirk said. “If we are able to develop sufficient evidence to support those allegations and they can be effectively addressed through W.T.O. litigation, we will pursue the enforcement of our rights at the W.T.O. independently of Section 301.”
That statement prompted Mr. Levin and Mr. Gerard to call for trade enforcement to receive greater priority and more resources. Trade complaints are notoriously complex and involve extensive investigations before the government can file a case before the W.T.O. in Geneva.
General Electric, which is a major supplier of wind energy equipment but has been sensitive about antagonizing officials in China, where it has substantial business, declined to comment on the decision.
John Frisbie, the president of the United States-China Business Council, which represents American businesses working in China, reacted cautiously.
Mr. Frisbie said the decision “appears to be an appropriate first step,” but that disputes between W.T.O. members are “nothing new or unique.”
Rob Gramlich, senior vice president for public policy at the American Wind Energy Association, said that the United States “can be a world leader in turbine manufacturing and exports” and that “any practice that tilts the global playing field unfairly would be of serious concern to our members who want to play a role in China, which has become the world’s largest wind market.”
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 23, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.
Employees work on wind turbines at a Gamesa factory in Tianjin, China. Washington is challenging a government fund in China that awards grants to makers of wind power equipment. By SEWELL CHAN
Published: December 22, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration filed a case against China with the World Trade Organization on Wednesday, siding with an American labor union, the United Steelworkers, in accusing Beijing of illegally subsidizing the production of wind power equipment.
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The decision is the second time in less than four months that the United States has accused China of violating world trade rules.
It represents an escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China over clean energy, viewed by the Obama administration as a frontier in which American companies are struggling to remain competitive.
The United States is challenging a special Chinese government fund that awards grants to makers of wind power equipment. The Americans say the fund provides subsidies that are illegal under W.T.O. rules because the grants appear to be contingent on manufacturers using parts made in China.
“Import substitution subsidies are particularly harmful and inherently trade distorting, which is why they are expressly prohibited under W.T.O. rules,” Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, said in a statement. “These subsidies effectively operate as a barrier to U.S. exports to China. Opening markets by removing barriers to our exports is a core element of the president’s trade strategy.”
China’s Ministry of Commerce issued a brief statement on its Web site early Thursday afternoon in Beijing, defending the country’s policies but providing few specifics. “Measures to develop wind energy in China are conducive to energy conservation and environmental protection as well as an important means of achieving sustainable development, and are consistent with W.T.O. rules,” the statement said.
The individual grants available under the Chinese program range from $6.7 million to $22.5 million. Chinese makers of wind turbines and associated parts can receive multiple grants as the size of the wind turbine models increases.
Total subsidies under the program since 2008 could amount to several hundred million dollars, according to Mr. Kirk’s office.
The United Steelworkers, which had protested the Chinese wind power fund as part of a larger, 5,800-page trade complaint it filed with the American government on Sept. 9, said the administration’s decision was only a first step in addressing a “vast web of protectionist policies” by Beijing.
“The goal is not litigation,” Leo W. Gerard, the union’s president, said in a statement. “It’s to end their practices.”
The accusation on Wednesday is the first step in the W.T.O.’s process for settling disputes.. If China and the United States cannot reach a solution through consultations, the United States may request the establishment of a W.T.O. dispute settlement panel.
Members of Congress who have been pushing for a bolder stance against China on trade, currency and other commercial matters, applauded the decision to file the case.
“The United States needs to take a more assertive approach to China’s mercantilist policies, and the administration’s action today is a welcome step in the right direction,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees trade.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement that China was on track to make half of the world’s wind turbines and solar panels and urged the administration to make trade enforcement a priority.
“The United States cannot replace its dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on clean energy technology made in China,” he said. “American manufacturing must lead the way — and to do this, they need a level playing field.”
The action grows out of an investigation Mr. Kirk’s office initiated on Oct. 15 in response to the Steelworkers’ case, which covered a range of practices in the clean-energy sector, including prohibited subsidies, export restraints and discrimination against foreign companies and imported goods.The case, known as a Section 301 complaint under the Trade Act of 1974, has been the subject of several talks between Chinese and American trade officials.
After two days of meetings last week in Washington, part of an annual forum known as the United States-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, China agreed to lift one barrier to foreign developers seeking to build wind farms there. The Chinese government will allow overseas experience in wind farm development, and not just experience in China, to qualify the developers for Chinese projects.
But several other barriers remain: foreign developers are banned from offshore projects for what China describes asnational security reasons, are not allowed to borrow as much money as domestic developers and are prohibited from selling carbon credits from their wind farms.
Mr. Kirk said his office would continue to investigate other parts of the Steelworkers’ complaint but was not planning additional filings under Section 301, which authorizes the president to take “all appropriate action,” including retaliation, against practices by foreign governments that violate international trade agreements or discriminate against American commerce.
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“We will continue to work closely with the U.S.W. and other stakeholders in the months ahead on the remaining allegations,” Mr. Kirk said. “If we are able to develop sufficient evidence to support those allegations and they can be effectively addressed through W.T.O. litigation, we will pursue the enforcement of our rights at the W.T.O. independently of Section 301.”
That statement prompted Mr. Levin and Mr. Gerard to call for trade enforcement to receive greater priority and more resources. Trade complaints are notoriously complex and involve extensive investigations before the government can file a case before the W.T.O. in Geneva.
General Electric, which is a major supplier of wind energy equipment but has been sensitive about antagonizing officials in China, where it has substantial business, declined to comment on the decision.
John Frisbie, the president of the United States-China Business Council, which represents American businesses working in China, reacted cautiously.
Mr. Frisbie said the decision “appears to be an appropriate first step,” but that disputes between W.T.O. members are “nothing new or unique.”
Rob Gramlich, senior vice president for public policy at the American Wind Energy Association, said that the United States “can be a world leader in turbine manufacturing and exports” and that “any practice that tilts the global playing field unfairly would be of serious concern to our members who want to play a role in China, which has become the world’s largest wind market.”
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 23, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.
22/12 Leaked Cable Stirs Animosities Between Palestinian Sides
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: December 22, 2010
JERUSALEM — Tensions were rising on Wednesday between Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political factions, over a leaked American diplomatic cable and ongoing accusations by each side regarding the other’s arrests, plans and statements.
Gen. Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the security services of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, called a news conference and said that Hamas rockets, rocket launchers and automatic weapons had been found in Ramallah and Nablus. This was evidence, he said, of plans by Hamas to attack fellow Palestinians.
“The security institutions are carefully considering the seriousness of the incitements to killing and the chaos that the illegal Hamas militias and leadership are carrying out in Gaza and Damascus,” he said, referring to the movement’s leaders, who are divided between Gaza and Damascus, Syria.
Earlier, Fatah denied the assertions of a cable from 2007 released by WikiLeaks, in which the head of the Israeli Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, is quoted as saying that Fatah forces asked Israel to attack Hamas in Gaza and that the Palestinian Authority shared its intelligence with Israel.
“They are approaching a zero-sum situation, and yet they ask us to attack Hamas,” Mr. Diskin was quoted as saying. “We have never seen this before. They are desperate.”
In a statement, Fatah said that none of its members had ever acted in that way and that the leak was part of a Shin Bet plot to undermine the Palestinian Authority.
General Damiri added that WikiLeaks should not be taken as truth without verification. “I wonder what Diskin was talking about,” he said.
Hamas officials said the leaked cable proved that the Palestinian Authority was and remained a collaborator with Israel.
Salah Bardawil, a Hamas official in Gaza, said the cable was further evidence that Fatah “wants to serve the occupation to uproot the resistance led by Hamas.”
Fatah supporters accuse Hamas of increasing arrests of its opponents in Gaza and mistreating them just as Hamas accuses the Palestinian Authority of arresting its followers and torturing them in West Bank prisons.
General Damiri denied the accusations, saying that there may have been individual errors by security force members but that the Palestinian Authority forces respected human rights.
After years of domination by Fatah, the more nationalist and secular of the two movements, Palestinian politics shifted when Hamas, which has an Islamist orientation and support from Iran, won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. An uneasy power-sharing effort fell apart in June 2007 when Hamas forces pushed Fatah out of Gaza. Attempts at reconciliation have failed repeatedly.
Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank.
Published: December 22, 2010
JERUSALEM — Tensions were rising on Wednesday between Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political factions, over a leaked American diplomatic cable and ongoing accusations by each side regarding the other’s arrests, plans and statements.
Enlarge This Image
Hatem Moussa/Associated Press
Hamas members took positions outside a police building they seized from Fatah security forces in Gaza City in June 2007.
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Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.
Related
Under ‘High-Tech House Arrest,’ WikiLeaks Founder Takes the Offensive (December 23, 2010)
Gen. Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the security services of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, called a news conference and said that Hamas rockets, rocket launchers and automatic weapons had been found in Ramallah and Nablus. This was evidence, he said, of plans by Hamas to attack fellow Palestinians.
“The security institutions are carefully considering the seriousness of the incitements to killing and the chaos that the illegal Hamas militias and leadership are carrying out in Gaza and Damascus,” he said, referring to the movement’s leaders, who are divided between Gaza and Damascus, Syria.
Earlier, Fatah denied the assertions of a cable from 2007 released by WikiLeaks, in which the head of the Israeli Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, is quoted as saying that Fatah forces asked Israel to attack Hamas in Gaza and that the Palestinian Authority shared its intelligence with Israel.
“They are approaching a zero-sum situation, and yet they ask us to attack Hamas,” Mr. Diskin was quoted as saying. “We have never seen this before. They are desperate.”
In a statement, Fatah said that none of its members had ever acted in that way and that the leak was part of a Shin Bet plot to undermine the Palestinian Authority.
General Damiri added that WikiLeaks should not be taken as truth without verification. “I wonder what Diskin was talking about,” he said.
Hamas officials said the leaked cable proved that the Palestinian Authority was and remained a collaborator with Israel.
Salah Bardawil, a Hamas official in Gaza, said the cable was further evidence that Fatah “wants to serve the occupation to uproot the resistance led by Hamas.”
Fatah supporters accuse Hamas of increasing arrests of its opponents in Gaza and mistreating them just as Hamas accuses the Palestinian Authority of arresting its followers and torturing them in West Bank prisons.
General Damiri denied the accusations, saying that there may have been individual errors by security force members but that the Palestinian Authority forces respected human rights.
After years of domination by Fatah, the more nationalist and secular of the two movements, Palestinian politics shifted when Hamas, which has an Islamist orientation and support from Iran, won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. An uneasy power-sharing effort fell apart in June 2007 when Hamas forces pushed Fatah out of Gaza. Attempts at reconciliation have failed repeatedly.
Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank.
22/12 Under ‘High-Tech House Arrest,’ WikiLeaks Founder Takes the Offensive
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: December 22, 2010
BUNGAY, England — When Julian Assange wakes these days, he looks out from a three-story Georgian mansion house overlooking a man-made lake. Under a blanket of snow, the 650-acre Ellingham Hall estate, a mile back from the closest public road, is as tranquil a spot as can be found in eastern England.
It is what Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has laconically referred to as “my high-tech house arrest” in interviews since arriving last week from the High Court in London, where he was granted bail of $370,000, much of it provided by wealthy celebrities and friends, including Vaughan Smith, Ellingham Hall’s owner.
From his rural redoubt, Mr. Assange has gone on a media offensive, continuing to charge that he is the victim of a smear campaign led by the United States, which is weighing criminal prosecution for the leaks of nearly 750,000 classified documents.
In an interview with The Times of London on Tuesday, he compared himself to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that when he was jailed at Wandsworth Prison in London, a black guard handed him a card saying, “I only have two heroes in the world, Dr. King and you.” Mr. Assange added, “That is representative of 50 percent of people.”
In the interview, he also compared the obloquy directed at WikiLeaks by the Obama administration and other critics with the “persecution” endured by American Jews in the 1950s. He added, “I’m not the Jewish people,” but suggested that the common thread was that supporters of WikiLeaks and American Jews were “people who believe in freedom of speech and accountability.”
Mr. Assange also denied prior contact with Bradley Manning, the Army private jailed on charges that he leaked thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks. “I never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it appeared in the media,” he said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday.
While there have been a number of prosecutions of government employees under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information, there has never been a successful prosecution of a journalist for receiving and publishing such information. But prosecutors have been studying online chats in which Private Manning reportedly talked about contacts with Mr. Assange to see if they suggest that the WikiLeaks leader solicited or encouraged the leaks.
Mr. Assange noted that it was standard journalistic practice to call government officials and ask for information. Criminalizing such conduct would threaten the freedom of the press, he said.
“If they want to push the line that when a newspaperman talks to someone in the government about looking for things relating to potential abuses, that that is a conspiracy to commit espionage, that is going to take out all the good government journalism that takes place in the United States,” Mr. Assange said.
In the interview with The Times of London, Mr. Assange also spoke of his “feeling of betrayal” toward the two women in Sweden, who have said he forced sex on them without using a condom, and in one case while the woman, according to her account, was asleep. Over the weekend, The Guardian and The New York Times obtained copies of a 68-page police document detailing the accusations against Mr. Assange, leaks he said were “clearly designed to undermine” his bail arrangements.
“Somebody in authority clearly intended to keep Julian in prison,” he said of himself.
Mr. Assange said the accusations had put at risk what WikiLeaks had achieved. “We have changed governance, we have certainly changed many political figures within governments, we have caused new law reform efforts, we have caused police investigations into the abuses we expose, U.N. investigations, investigations here in the U.K., especially in relation to our revelation of the circumstances of the deaths of 109,000 people in Iraq,” he said. He added, “We are also changing the perception of the West.”
Attempts by The New York Times to interview Mr. Assange in recent days were unsuccessful. For months, he has regularly changed cellphones, and had members of his close-knit entourage answer them for him.
State’s Secrets
Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.
Documents: Selected Dispatches
Related
Leaked Cable Stirs Animosities Between Palestinian Sides (December 23, 2010)
Recently, even those have been switched off, and Ellingham Hall has padlocked its gates against intruders. Telephones there go unanswered, and the hall’s Web site for weddings and shooting parties, during which the public is charged $40 to shoot a pheasant, has been taken off-line.
Where the private road leading to Ellingham Hall begins, WikiLeaks supporters who have gathered to support Mr. Assange have taped a hand-lettered placard to an electricity junction box, next to one posted by Mr. Smith advertising “fresh eggs,” saying “Free Bradley Manning.”
Mr. Assange has given conflicting accounts of the handling of his case in Sweden. Immediately after an initial warrant was issued for his arrest in August, he said he had “no idea” who his accusers were; he has since acknowledged that he slept with both of the women over a four-day period before the warrant was issued. He has said he waited weeks to be interviewed by the police in Sweden; they have said that it was Mr. Assange who delayed meeting with them.
He said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday that he saw no reason to return to Sweden to answer the allegations. Asked why he would not comply with the legal processes of a country with a respected system of jurisprudence, he described Sweden as “a bit more of a banana republic” than its reputation suggested, and said his WikiLeaks work was too important to answer to “random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat.”
“They can come here, or we can have a video linkup, or they can accept a statement of mine,” he said. In the BBC interview, Mr. Assange acknowledged obliquely that he had high ambitions for himself, saying, “Everybody would like to be a messianic figure without dying.”
At times in the interviews, he seemed conflicted about the impact of the Swedish allegations. Speaking to the BBC, he said he thought they could be “quite helpful to our organization” because “it will expose a tremendous abuse of power.” But he also rued the impact on his own reputation, saying that his name was now linked widely on the Internet with the rape allegation.
Using Google, he said, and “searching for my name and the word ‘rape,’ there are some 30 million Web pages. So this has been a very successful smear.”
Published: December 22, 2010
BUNGAY, England — When Julian Assange wakes these days, he looks out from a three-story Georgian mansion house overlooking a man-made lake. Under a blanket of snow, the 650-acre Ellingham Hall estate, a mile back from the closest public road, is as tranquil a spot as can be found in eastern England.
Enlarge This ImageBut Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who is fighting accusations of sexual misconduct in Sweden, strolls through this bucolic idyll with an electronic tag on his ankle and a required daily 20-minute drive to the part-time police station in the neighboring town of Beccles. There he signs a register and chats “pleasantly” with the officers, according to their account, and returns to his curfew at the hall.
Carl Court/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, held a news conference last Friday on the grounds of Ellingham Hall estate.
State’s Secrets
Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.
Documents:
Selected Dispatches
Related
Leaked
Cable Stirs Animosities Between Palestinian Sides (December 23, 2010)
It is what Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has laconically referred to as “my high-tech house arrest” in interviews since arriving last week from the High Court in London, where he was granted bail of $370,000, much of it provided by wealthy celebrities and friends, including Vaughan Smith, Ellingham Hall’s owner.
From his rural redoubt, Mr. Assange has gone on a media offensive, continuing to charge that he is the victim of a smear campaign led by the United States, which is weighing criminal prosecution for the leaks of nearly 750,000 classified documents.
In an interview with The Times of London on Tuesday, he compared himself to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that when he was jailed at Wandsworth Prison in London, a black guard handed him a card saying, “I only have two heroes in the world, Dr. King and you.” Mr. Assange added, “That is representative of 50 percent of people.”
In the interview, he also compared the obloquy directed at WikiLeaks by the Obama administration and other critics with the “persecution” endured by American Jews in the 1950s. He added, “I’m not the Jewish people,” but suggested that the common thread was that supporters of WikiLeaks and American Jews were “people who believe in freedom of speech and accountability.”
Mr. Assange also denied prior contact with Bradley Manning, the Army private jailed on charges that he leaked thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks. “I never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it appeared in the media,” he said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday.
While there have been a number of prosecutions of government employees under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information, there has never been a successful prosecution of a journalist for receiving and publishing such information. But prosecutors have been studying online chats in which Private Manning reportedly talked about contacts with Mr. Assange to see if they suggest that the WikiLeaks leader solicited or encouraged the leaks.
Mr. Assange noted that it was standard journalistic practice to call government officials and ask for information. Criminalizing such conduct would threaten the freedom of the press, he said.
“If they want to push the line that when a newspaperman talks to someone in the government about looking for things relating to potential abuses, that that is a conspiracy to commit espionage, that is going to take out all the good government journalism that takes place in the United States,” Mr. Assange said.
In the interview with The Times of London, Mr. Assange also spoke of his “feeling of betrayal” toward the two women in Sweden, who have said he forced sex on them without using a condom, and in one case while the woman, according to her account, was asleep. Over the weekend, The Guardian and The New York Times obtained copies of a 68-page police document detailing the accusations against Mr. Assange, leaks he said were “clearly designed to undermine” his bail arrangements.
“Somebody in authority clearly intended to keep Julian in prison,” he said of himself.
Mr. Assange said the accusations had put at risk what WikiLeaks had achieved. “We have changed governance, we have certainly changed many political figures within governments, we have caused new law reform efforts, we have caused police investigations into the abuses we expose, U.N. investigations, investigations here in the U.K., especially in relation to our revelation of the circumstances of the deaths of 109,000 people in Iraq,” he said. He added, “We are also changing the perception of the West.”
Attempts by The New York Times to interview Mr. Assange in recent days were unsuccessful. For months, he has regularly changed cellphones, and had members of his close-knit entourage answer them for him.
State’s Secrets
Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.
Documents: Selected Dispatches
Related
Leaked Cable Stirs Animosities Between Palestinian Sides (December 23, 2010)
Recently, even those have been switched off, and Ellingham Hall has padlocked its gates against intruders. Telephones there go unanswered, and the hall’s Web site for weddings and shooting parties, during which the public is charged $40 to shoot a pheasant, has been taken off-line.
Where the private road leading to Ellingham Hall begins, WikiLeaks supporters who have gathered to support Mr. Assange have taped a hand-lettered placard to an electricity junction box, next to one posted by Mr. Smith advertising “fresh eggs,” saying “Free Bradley Manning.”
Mr. Assange has given conflicting accounts of the handling of his case in Sweden. Immediately after an initial warrant was issued for his arrest in August, he said he had “no idea” who his accusers were; he has since acknowledged that he slept with both of the women over a four-day period before the warrant was issued. He has said he waited weeks to be interviewed by the police in Sweden; they have said that it was Mr. Assange who delayed meeting with them.
He said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday that he saw no reason to return to Sweden to answer the allegations. Asked why he would not comply with the legal processes of a country with a respected system of jurisprudence, he described Sweden as “a bit more of a banana republic” than its reputation suggested, and said his WikiLeaks work was too important to answer to “random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat.”
“They can come here, or we can have a video linkup, or they can accept a statement of mine,” he said. In the BBC interview, Mr. Assange acknowledged obliquely that he had high ambitions for himself, saying, “Everybody would like to be a messianic figure without dying.”
At times in the interviews, he seemed conflicted about the impact of the Swedish allegations. Speaking to the BBC, he said he thought they could be “quite helpful to our organization” because “it will expose a tremendous abuse of power.” But he also rued the impact on his own reputation, saying that his name was now linked widely on the Internet with the rape allegation.
Using Google, he said, and “searching for my name and the word ‘rape,’ there are some 30 million Web pages. So this has been a very successful smear.”
20/12 NYT - The Captive Arab Mind
Op-Ed Columnist
By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 20, 2010
LONDON — At this point it is clear enough who invaded Iraq. Contrary to general opinion, it was Iran. After all, applying the Roman principle of cui bono — “to whose benefit?” — there can be no question that Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the ousting of its enemy Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Shiites in Baghdad, must have done it.
I know it appears that the United States was behind the invasion. What about “shock and awe” and all that? Hah! It is true that the deception was elaborate. But consider the facts: The invasion of Iraq has weakened the United States, Iran’s old enemy, and so it can only be — quod erat demonstrandum — that Tehran was the devious mastermind.
This mocking “analysis” is often deployed deadpan by my colleague, Robert Worth, the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. After three years living in Lebanon and crisscrossing the Arab world, he uses this “theory” to express his frustration with the epidemic of cui bono thinking in the region.
I say “thinking,” but that’s generous. What we are dealing with here is the paltry harvest of captive minds. Such minds resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.
While I was in Beirut this month, the conspiratorial world view was in overdrive, driven by WikiLeaks and by the imminence of an indictment from an international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri: more on that later.
The notion was actually doing the rounds that recent shark attacks at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik were the work of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hadn’t someone seen an electronic device attached to a shark being directed from Tel Aviv, video-game style, to devour a Russian tourist’s leg?
One Egyptian government official suggested the theory was plausible enough. After all, damage to the Egyptian tourist industry could only please Israel. Cui bono ?
In his seminal collection of essays, “The Captive Mind,” Czeslaw Milosz described the intellectual’s relationship to Stalinist totalitarianism: “His chief characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.”
Lebanon is a freewheeling delight on the surface — as far from Soviet gloom as can be imagined — but it betrays the servile mind-set of powerless people convinced that they are ultimately but puppets. This playground of sectarian interests, where each community has its external backer, may be the perfect incubator of conspiracy theories.
But Lebanon is only an extreme case in an Arab world, where the Internet and new media outlets have not prised open minds conditioned by decades of repression and weakness.
Hariri, who was pro-Western and anti-Syrian, was assassinated in downtown Beirut. Suspicion fell on Syrian agents. A United Nations tribunal was set up to investigate — itself a reflection of Lebanon’s weakness in that the country’s own institutions were deemed inadequate.
Five years later, I found the investigation irrevocably infected by cui bono fever. “Who took advantage of the killing?” Talal Atrissi, a political analyst, asked me. “Not the Syrians, they left Lebanon afterward. It was the United States that benefited.” Hah!
Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah member of Parliament, told me: “The tribunal is entirely politicized, an illegal entity used by the United States as one of the tools of regional conflict against Syria and the resistance.”
Theories abound that Israel penetrated the Lebanese cellphone system to coordinate an assassination portrayed as providing the pretext for a failed anti-Syrian putsch by the West (much as 9/11 is grotesquely perceived in the Arab world as a self-inflicted pretext for the United States to wage war against Muslims).
Why, it is asked, was an international tribunal set up for Hariri but not for Benazir Bhutto’s killing? Why has the C.I.A. not been interrogated? Such questions now have such a hold on Lebanon that I have reluctantly concluded that justice and truth in the Hariri case are impossible, victims of the captive Arab mind.
In the cui bono universe there can be no closure because events stream on endlessly, opening up boundless possibilities for ex post facto theorizing.
Of course, the saga of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and the leak of a quarter million secret U.S. diplomatic cables are also viewed as part of some grand conspiracy. They reflect the decline of America and the revolt of its vast federal bureaucracy! No, they demonstrate America’s enduring power, recruiting female Swedish agents to accuse Assange of sex crimes!
The truth is more banal. The WikiLeaks cables reveal autocratic but powerless Sunni Arab governments calling on the United States to do everything they are unable to do themselves — from decapitating Iran to coordinating a Sunni attack on an ascendant Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such fecklessness, and the endless conspiracy theories that go with it, suggest an Arab world still gripped by illusion.
Milosz wrote powerfully of the “solace of reverie” in worlds of oppression. I found much solace in Lebanon but little evidence that the Middle East is ready to exchange conspiratorial victimhood for self-empowerment — and so move forward.
By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 20, 2010
LONDON — At this point it is clear enough who invaded Iraq. Contrary to general opinion, it was Iran. After all, applying the Roman principle of cui bono — “to whose benefit?” — there can be no question that Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the ousting of its enemy Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Shiites in Baghdad, must have done it.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Roger Cohen
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I know it appears that the United States was behind the invasion. What about “shock and awe” and all that? Hah! It is true that the deception was elaborate. But consider the facts: The invasion of Iraq has weakened the United States, Iran’s old enemy, and so it can only be — quod erat demonstrandum — that Tehran was the devious mastermind.
This mocking “analysis” is often deployed deadpan by my colleague, Robert Worth, the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. After three years living in Lebanon and crisscrossing the Arab world, he uses this “theory” to express his frustration with the epidemic of cui bono thinking in the region.
I say “thinking,” but that’s generous. What we are dealing with here is the paltry harvest of captive minds. Such minds resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.
While I was in Beirut this month, the conspiratorial world view was in overdrive, driven by WikiLeaks and by the imminence of an indictment from an international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri: more on that later.
The notion was actually doing the rounds that recent shark attacks at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik were the work of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hadn’t someone seen an electronic device attached to a shark being directed from Tel Aviv, video-game style, to devour a Russian tourist’s leg?
One Egyptian government official suggested the theory was plausible enough. After all, damage to the Egyptian tourist industry could only please Israel. Cui bono ?
In his seminal collection of essays, “The Captive Mind,” Czeslaw Milosz described the intellectual’s relationship to Stalinist totalitarianism: “His chief characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.”
Lebanon is a freewheeling delight on the surface — as far from Soviet gloom as can be imagined — but it betrays the servile mind-set of powerless people convinced that they are ultimately but puppets. This playground of sectarian interests, where each community has its external backer, may be the perfect incubator of conspiracy theories.
But Lebanon is only an extreme case in an Arab world, where the Internet and new media outlets have not prised open minds conditioned by decades of repression and weakness.
Hariri, who was pro-Western and anti-Syrian, was assassinated in downtown Beirut. Suspicion fell on Syrian agents. A United Nations tribunal was set up to investigate — itself a reflection of Lebanon’s weakness in that the country’s own institutions were deemed inadequate.
Five years later, I found the investigation irrevocably infected by cui bono fever. “Who took advantage of the killing?” Talal Atrissi, a political analyst, asked me. “Not the Syrians, they left Lebanon afterward. It was the United States that benefited.” Hah!
Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah member of Parliament, told me: “The tribunal is entirely politicized, an illegal entity used by the United States as one of the tools of regional conflict against Syria and the resistance.”
Theories abound that Israel penetrated the Lebanese cellphone system to coordinate an assassination portrayed as providing the pretext for a failed anti-Syrian putsch by the West (much as 9/11 is grotesquely perceived in the Arab world as a self-inflicted pretext for the United States to wage war against Muslims).
Why, it is asked, was an international tribunal set up for Hariri but not for Benazir Bhutto’s killing? Why has the C.I.A. not been interrogated? Such questions now have such a hold on Lebanon that I have reluctantly concluded that justice and truth in the Hariri case are impossible, victims of the captive Arab mind.
In the cui bono universe there can be no closure because events stream on endlessly, opening up boundless possibilities for ex post facto theorizing.
Of course, the saga of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and the leak of a quarter million secret U.S. diplomatic cables are also viewed as part of some grand conspiracy. They reflect the decline of America and the revolt of its vast federal bureaucracy! No, they demonstrate America’s enduring power, recruiting female Swedish agents to accuse Assange of sex crimes!
The truth is more banal. The WikiLeaks cables reveal autocratic but powerless Sunni Arab governments calling on the United States to do everything they are unable to do themselves — from decapitating Iran to coordinating a Sunni attack on an ascendant Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such fecklessness, and the endless conspiracy theories that go with it, suggest an Arab world still gripped by illusion.
Milosz wrote powerfully of the “solace of reverie” in worlds of oppression. I found much solace in Lebanon but little evidence that the Middle East is ready to exchange conspiratorial victimhood for self-empowerment — and so move forward.
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