An important update from NBC News: U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands...
The New York Times has the story today: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to soon lift an order blocking the initiation of new cases against detainees, which he imposed on the day of President Obama’s inauguration. That would clear the way for tribunal officials, for the first time under the Obama administration, to initiate new charges ...
Oxford University Press has asked me to post the following announcement: Law Yearbooks from Oxford – Free Online Access until February 28th Since the start of January 2011 the law yearbooks from Oxford University Press, previously available only in print, have become available online as well. This includes all volumes since 1996 but not the most recent ones which only published in...
As the U.S. government continues to try to shut down WikiLeaks -- preferably, it seems, without having to actually charge Assange or the website with an actual crime -- it's important not to forget how much we've learned through WikiLeaks' efforts. Here is a (partial) list created by Greg Mitchell, who has been keeping a daily log of all things...
Last week I noted the remarkable spectacle of the Guardian publishing an editorial that blamed WikiLeaks for releasing a State Department cable that had, in fact, been initially released by the Guardian itself. At the time, my evidence of that fact was circumstantial, based on the time-dates provided by the Guardian and WikiLeaks websites. But no longer -- eight days...
The Guardian published an editorial by a Republican political operative today blaming WikiLeaks for releasing a State Department cable concerning a meeting between Tsvangirai and Susan Rice in which Tsvangirai discussed the possibility of peacefully removing Mugabe from power: Now, in the wake of the WikiLeaks' release, one of the men targeted by US and EU travel and asset freezes, Mugabe's...
Oxford has sent me the initial version of the book cover. Here it is: The painting, "The Red Stairway," is by Ben Shahn, a Lithuanian-born American artist who painted between the 1920s and the 1950s. In 1942 and 1943, Shahn created propaganda posters for the Office of War Information (OWI); his poster about the destruction of Lidice is an...
True to James Gathii's comment to my last post, the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, has made it clear that Kenya won't be withdrawing from the ICC anytime soon: Kenya's prime minister on Thursday dismissed as futile a motion by lawmakers to withdraw from the statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) - a move intended to head...
This according to the BBC: Kenyan MPs have voted overwhelmingly for the country to pull out of the treaty which created the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The move comes a week after the ICC prosecutor named six Kenyans he accuses of being behind post-election violence. The prosecutor's list included senior politicians and civil servants. The MPs do not have the...
When Fox News isn't busy making people dumber, it's writing chyrons like this: ...
A stark reminder that freedom of expression is indeed a precious thing: Jafar Panahi is one of the most acclaimed film directors in the world. Admirers like myself were horrified and astonished at the news, announced yesterday, that Jafar Panahi had been sentenced not only to six years in prison, but to an unimaginable twenty-year total ban on...
Today at Lawfare: If DOJ tries to prosecute Assange, we will see more and more scrutiny of double standards in the treatment of traditional media leak solicitors (NYT etc.) v. Assange, and of double standards in the treatment of high-level U.S. government leakers v. Assange. Scrutiny of the first double standard will weaken press freedoms as the...
