Watada’s latest appeal still pending

Question: What is the status of the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who faced an Army court-martial for refusing to deploy to Iraq in 2006?

Answer: "No real news," reports his civilian attorney Ken Keagan, since the federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in November prohibiting the Army from bringing Watada to a second court-martial. Watada's first court-martial, a year ago, ended in a mistrial. Watada and his attorney claim that a second trial would violate his constitutional rights. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled on Nov. 8 that no court-martial will be held for Watada pending the outcome of his claim that it would violate his Fifth Amendment rights by trying him twice for the same charges...

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SPEAKING FREELY
Asian American soldiers of conscience

..."Torture is un-lawful", are the first words of his keynote address, part of the "War on Terror" lecture series presented by the Human Rights Center at Berkeley. In 2004 Taguba was lead investigator into conditions at the US military's Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq. His highly critical report was publicized throughout the world. The 6,000-page report gave evidence of torture, prisoner abuse, and a failure of leadership and responsibility at the highest levels of authority. The report was hailed as a thorough investigation completed in only 30 days. But in January 2006, Taguba received a phone call from the Army's Vice-Chief of Staff who offered no reason but said, "I need you to retire by January of 2007." This Taguba did after 34 years of active duty.

The war in Iraq has thrust American soldiers of Asian ancestry into the limelight as no other US conflict has ever done before. Aside from their Asian heritage there is yet another tie that these men have. It reflects another on-going battle - one that is being fought in the halls of Congress and in countless debates throughout the world. Asian American soldiers have found themselves front and center in these fights over the use of torture, questions of wartime ethics and conduct and even over the legality of the Iraq war itself.

In my interviews with war resistor First Lieutenant Ehren Watada; James Yee, the former captain and Muslim chaplin at Guantanamo Bay Prison; and Taguba, they all remain strong believers in the US constitution, its principals and the ability of the US military to protect them. Despite the different ways they acted on their beliefs and despite differing opinions, what remains is their commitment to a firm set of ideals and their willingness to pay a price for it.

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Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq underscored the Bush administration's determination to go to war, with Truth being its first casualty. Watada argues that the President misled the public and that the reasons for going to war were based on false premises. Watada states that he will not fight an illegal war. He now faces a possible court martial.

The stand Watada took remains a source of controversy. Yet support for him is strong, with a group of Asian Americans supporters driving several hundred miles to his trials in Washington State. Support for Yee first came from Muslim Americans. But as events surrounding his case were revealed, Chinese and Asian Americans rallied to his cause.

I compare this situation to that of the war in Southeast Asia. When I documented stories of Asian American Vietnam Veterans, I was told of an Asian American soldier being signaled out by a squad leader. He then told the squad, "This is what the enemy looks like." The contributions of these Asian Americans in the armed forces were no less than those of Asian American soldiers today. But too often racial stereotyping and derogatory attitudes reserved for the Vietnamese were also pointed at Asian Americans. The sense of isolation, the mental and emotional scars inflicted upon these men and women remained apparent years after returning to civilian life...

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Update On Wikileaks Censorship

On Monday I wrote about the unprecedented attempt by Bank Julius Baer to censor the Wikileak.org web site by having a San Francisco judge issue a restraining order telling the web site's domain name registrar to stop Wikileak.org from pointing to its actual IP address, 88.80.13.160. This was the first know instance of a court shutting down an entire web site. One Kafkaesque feature of this omnibus order is that the court order and other materials were ordered to be emailed to Wikileaks. But with the domain name Wikileaks.org abolished, no mail sent to them could get to anyone.

Two days after my article, the New York Times finally covered the Wikileaks censorship effort and conclude:

"Judge White's order disabling the entire site “is clearly not constitutional,” said David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School. “There is no justification under the First Amendment for shutting down an entire Web site.”

The narrower order, forbidding the dissemination of the disputed documents, is a more classic prior restraint on publication. Such orders are disfavored under the First Amendment and almost never survive appellate scrutiny."

Since the controversy broke Monday, this censorship has become a major topic in the news and on the web. after all, the shutting down of an entire web site threatens all citizens who use or rely upon the web for disseminating and obtaining a diversity of otherwise unobtainable information. A new blog site, http://wikileak.org/, has been created:

"to discuss the ethical and technical issues surrounding the WikiLeakS.org project, which claims to be developing an "uncensorable" version of WikiPedia, for "mass document leaking" and whistleblowing."

While I have no direct knowledge of who is behind this new site , I assume it is tongue-in-cheek when it goes on to state:

"This blog is not yet affiliated with the secretive and media manipulative WikiLeakS.org project, but the issues for discussion remain important, regardless of whether or not WikiLeakS.org ever overcomes its technical, legal, ethical and funding problems."

At this point they have a detailed analysis of the second restraining order against Wikileaks in which they argue that it is so broad that it may actually ban virtually all internet activity by the bank, Bank Julius Baer, that brought the suit! Read it and see for yourself.

The order was issued, allegedly because Wikileaks had obtained bank documents that, according to Wikileaks:

“allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.”

Wikileaks has made a discovery potentially shedding light upon the bank's motives in the case. Bank Julius Baer was about to launch a $1 billion IPO, and that the press attention and increased regulatory scrutiny flowing from it may well scuttle this deal. After all, it's hard to launch an IPO when there are suggestions in the press ad the blogosphere that your profts may be due to money laundering. It may turn out that this restraining order was an act of self destruction by Bank Julius Baer with few parallels. As a Wikileaks press release explains [not being a profesional journalist, I can actually quote their press release instead of paraphrasing and pretending I did the reporting myself]:

"Wikileaks has discovered Bank Julius Baer was preparing to take their US operation public via an a billion dollar IPO. They filed the prospectus with the SEC on Feb 12, a mere three days before convincing Federal court Judge Jeffery White to order total censorship of the transparency site.

"We are an asset management company that provides investment management services to institutional and mutual fund clients. We are best known for our International Equity strategies, which represented 92% of our assets under management as of September 30, 2007." They were going to call the business "Artio" (ticker symbol ART, to be listed on the NYSE). Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were to underwrite the IPO according to Bloomberg.

So the last thing they needed was to be the subject of a New York Times story and all over the world press, associated with money laundering. Now the deal goes under a microscope. Their underwriters have to take a second look and the SEC may have questions. Julius Baer will probably have to file a "material event" 8-K report with the SEC. Newspaper and magazine reporters will be looking at Baer. The question will be raised that the rather high returns Baer reports may be achieved via money laundering.

All this is happening in a down market, in which it is hard to do an IPO and in which investors are very sensitive to unexpected risk. The whole deal may evaporate, or be repriced downward.

Attempting to censor Wikileaks was a very, very expensive mistake for Baer."

Meanwhile, the struggle against this censorship and prior restraint has suddenly become a central front in the battle to preserve freedom of speech for those without the millions to pay for it. We should all stand prepared to assist in any ways requested.

And remember that, while Wikileaks.org no longer points to it, Wikileaks still exists. Just past its IP address , 88.80.13.160, into your web browser, or go to http://www.wikileaks.cx/, or any of dozens of other cover names. Let the leaks continue!

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Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations leading the struggle to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations.

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Biggest ever Fairtrade switch by a UK company

• Tate & Lyle announces its ambition to move its entire retail cane sugars range to Fairtrade, marking the largest ever switch to the ethical labelling scheme by any major UK food or drink brand.
• In the first year alone, the switch will create a return of at least £2 million in Fairtrade premiums for cane farmers.

In an announcement expected to dramatically increase the amount of Fairtrade certified sugar sold in the UK, Tate & Lyle confirms today its ambition to move 100% of its retail cane sugars range to Fairtrade. It also establishes the accessibility of Fairtrade for all.

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Fairtrade Foundation Executive Director Harriet Lamb comments: “Fairtrade is already making a big difference to the lives of more than seven million people in the developing world, but there are millions more we'd like to reach. In terms of size and scale, this is the biggest ever Fairtrade switch by a UK company and it's tremendous this iconic UK brand is backing Fairtrade. We'd now like to encourage other companies of the same size and scale as Tate & Lyle to think actively about making a similar commitment. The more we can make Fairtrade the norm, the more its positive impact can be felt by farmers and their communities across the developing world.”...

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Confessions Of A Propagandist

" ... China's propaganda department has a long history of antagonizing the international community with its words. Regular rants about the "splittist" Dalai Lama--usually after he has a conversation with a head of state--do more to foster support for the Tibetan leader than to turn the tide against him. The veiled threats of military action against Taiwan also never fail to rankle. The trouble is, everyone now expects these fiery remonstrations; to suddenly tone down the tirades would be like saying the Dalai Lama is not so bad or Taiwan can have independence after all.

While the highly formulaic nature of Chinese government rhetoric makes for stodgy news stories, academics rejoice in its rigidity, analyzing the language to predict subtle shifts in party ideology. Hong Kong University's China Media Project constructed a league table charting the frequency with which President Hu used certain buzzwords in his report to the 17th Communist Party Congress last October. "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" thrashed the opposition with 52 references, comfortably defeating "scientific development," "opening up and reform" and "harmony."

A few plotted graphs and some articulate reasoning later, the China Media Project experts concluded that the party's basic direction for the next five years was "first and foremost a reaffirmation of the path of reform and opening in response to the left's opposition and call for a turn back." Simple as that.

For the rest of the world, however, it was anyone's guess what Hu was trying to say, and the uncertainty was reflected in contrasting headlines. Following the speech, Agence France Presse went with "Hu flags political reform for China." The New York Times plumped for "China's leader closes door to reform." ... "

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Are Kenyan runners stoking violence?

As anyone following the sport of running knows, a sizable chunk of the world's fastest runners hail from Kenya, a country rocked by violence after a disputed December 2007 election. Now a paragraph in a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) says elite runners there may be funding, training, and commanding militias...

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