Streams of WikiLeaks

One of the interesting sidebars to the WikiLeaks story is Glenn Greenwald’s back-and-forth with Wired Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen regarding Wired’s refusal to publish the chat logs in which alleged whistleblower Pvt. Bradley Manning confided in Adrian Lamo about uploading documents to WikiLeaks. 

Here’s as short a summup as we can provide.

The Backstory:

Last May Adrian Lamo,  who has his own checkered history with the law, gave Poulsen the full chat logs between Manning and Lamo in which Manning confesses to having been the source for WikiLeaks.

At the same time, Lamo was also working with the FBI as an informant against Manning.

Wired initially broke the story, and published about 25% of the chat logs. All other copies of the chat logs were for various reasons lost, and thus Wired retains the only copy of the full conversations between Manning and Lamo.

Subsequently, Lamo went around garnering a great deal of press attention for himself by making claims regarding the content of the unpublished chat logs, many of which seemed contradictory including suggestions “that Manning told him Assange set up some kind of private or “special” FTP servers for his use.”  A connection which, if true, could give the U.S. grounds to prosecute Assange as a conspirator.  Assange, meanwhile, has denied ever having met or spoken to Manning.

Journalists like Greenwald called upon Wired to either confirm or deny Lamo’s statements, if not publish the chat logs in full. Wired has declined to do so.

Greenwald Questions Wired’s Connection To Lamo:

Greenwald first published a piece last June titled “The Strange and Consequential Case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks,” which questioned why Wired was refusing to publish the full content of the chat logs since Wired had not entered into an agreement with Lamo. Every aspect of the WikiLeaks disclosure is riddled with legal issues, but Wired had not concretely cited any as the cause. Moreover, if Adrian Lamo was speaking about the chat logs to the press, then Wired could hardly be protecting him as a source.

Things were mostly quiet until Monday when Greenwald wrote another fiery, provocative article restating his earlier claims:

For more than six months, [Poulsen] has possessed — but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year’s most significant political stories:  the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks’ source. This is easily one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year.

The bottom line from Hansen and Poulsen is that they still refuse to release any further chat excerpts or, more inexcusably, to comment at all on — to verify or deny — Lamo’s public statements about what Manning said to him that do not appear in those excerpts.

Greenwald repeatedly says that there is a very close and longstanding connection between Poulsen and Lamo. (The facebook picture of Lamo and Poulsen above is cited as evidence.) The implication of his claim ostensibly is that Poulsen is not releasing the remainder of the chat logs because he is trying to protect his good friend Lamo.

Wired’s Angry Response:

On Tuesday both Poulsen and Wired’s editor-in-chief Evan Hansen have shot back at Greenwald.

Said Poulsen:

Greenwald’s piece is a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness.

…those first stories in June either excerpted, quoted or reported on everything of consequence Manning had to say about his leaking. We’ve led the coverage on this story, and we would gain nothing by letting another scoop simmer unreported on our hard drives.

Hansen turned the tables around on Greenwald, implying that Greenwald and WikiLeaks have a strange connection. He called Greenwald “an outspoken WikiLeaks defender,” whose hypocritical outcries were based on being pro-WikiLeaks rather than following a consistent set of journalistic ethics.

Hansen likewise maintained that “Our position has been and remains that the logs include sensitive personal information with no bearing on WikiLeaks, and it would serve no purpose to publish them at this time.”

Greenwald Doesn’t Buy It:

Yesterday, Greenwald published a response to the response, updated it, and then wrote a new post “summarizing” his argument against Wired. It’s over 4,200 words long.

He accuses Wired of “trying to put the focus on me to obscure their own ongoing conduct in concealing the key evidence shining light on these events.”

Wired is hiding the key evidence about what took place here, thus allowing Lamo to spout all sorts of serious claims without any check and thus drive much of the reporting about WikiLeaks.

Meanwhile last night Poulsen Twittered out that “logs do not support or back up the statements Adrian Lamo seems to have been making”  Poulsen Twittered out last night that the unpublished logs contain no references to Assange or private servers suggesting, as BoingBoing notes that Lamo’s claims of a connection between Assange and Manning cannot be sourced to the remaining unpublished chat logs. 

Meanwhile, Wired has yet to publish the full logs. 

So much for making that short.

via businessinsider.com

Military expansion in Zimbabwe, beginning in November 2008, has displaced the Zimbabwean police and diverted the diamond flow from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to the Zimbabwean military. According to the tribal chief of the diamond-rich Marange region, military and police shootings are continuing. One operation conducted by a human rights group discovered over 200 bodies with fatal gunshot or dog bite wounds.

The people of Marange have been killed, beaten, and arrested for dealing in diamonds. They entrusted their diamond findings to the village chief, but he himself was coerced by the military to give up his diamonds. The increase in military forces is due in part to power-sharing negotiations between ZANU-PF and the MDC. The military, under ZANU-PF control, has been seeking to consolidate its authority.

Digging for diamonds is done by panners. The typical practice is for soldiers to supervise and escort groups of panners as they dig. At the end of the day, the diamonds are apportioned between soldiers and diggers. The diamonds are then taken to military bases and presumably taken by senior military commanders.

Despite the increase in diamond-associated violence, there has been a shift in diamond sales to purely through foreign exchange. Lebanese buyers in particular have formed profitable relationships with senior military and police officials in the Marange region.

via crowdleak.net

The objective of Crowdleak is to diminish all language barriers that may be encountered by those attempting to access Wikileaks cables. With the summarization, translation and publication of cables, we are able to reach the masses by using a method known as ‘crowd journalism.’ We do this by having journalist register at Crowdleak, then find cables that have been leaked by Wikileaks. From there they summarize the contents of the cable and submit it for peer review. Once the post has gained a 66% approval rating or higher it’s then published on the site.

Collectively, we have decided to implement the following languages: German, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian. (more will follow soon!)

Our concept is to provide those around the world access to new information that has recently come to light through Wikileaks cable leaks. Considering a large portion of leaked cables are in English, it is exceptionally complex for non-native English speakers to gain insight and maintain an overview based on the cable publications. Crowdleak would like to ensure information is first and foremost accessible by those in outside countries, but also want this information to be understandable and thorough.

• Crowdleak is the only multilingual site in support of Wikileaks cables; available in over 10 different languages
• Our articles are only published after being put through a ‘crowd journalism’ system. Instead of having one single person write an article, our system requires one individual to write an article that can then be edited and peer-reviewed by multiple people for feedback of all kinds. From there the article is then voted on by peers to see if it passes peer-review. This unique crowd journalism technique gives Crowdleaks leverage to provide only the most accurate content
• Although our site publishes information found on Wikileaks and within its leaked cables, we have no affiliation to Wikileaks and do not claim ownership of any leaked cables
• We specifically look for cables that haven’t got much media attention but could really cause the most damage. Despite common rumor, there are still thousands of cables that have yet to be sorted through

via crowdleak.net

Here are links to stories that I’ve found from the past week while I was away, which you may have already seen but here they are just in case.

Assange says signed £1.1 million in book deals - Yahoo! News

[LEAKSPIN] Russian Prisons (08MOSCOW531) (via erasedkilljoy)

The Dark Side of Wikileaks | The Atlanta Post

Wikileaks: Egypt still sees Israel as its main adversary

HaikuLeaks — The New Way to Read Your WikiLeaks - TIME NewsFeed

WikiLeaks backers say Zimbabwe websites shut down - Israel News, Ynetnews

Your pick for Most Intriguing Person of 2010 is … – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

Wired.com: Lamo/Manning Wikileaks chat logs contain no unpublished references to Assange or private servers (Updated) - Boing Boing

And Leakspin in now Crowdleak.org with an impressive new website.

Have I missed anything?

A cable dated March 24, 2008 reports upon a recent Washington review of the reporting and collection needs of USG (United States Government) agencies in Paraguay. The review lists the priorities USG agencies are to focus upon when they allocate resources and update plans to collect information on Paraguay. Information was desired upon all leading presidential contenders – particularly upon the Minister of Education, Blanca Ovelar; former Vice President Castiglioni, and also on Lino Oviedo; and Fernando Lugo. The information included biographical and financial information but also biometric data including fingerprints, facial images, iris scans, and DNA, on these individuals.

P.J. Crowley,State Department spokesman, sought to reassure the world that American diplomats are not spies, but ignored questions about why they were asked to collect samples of DNA, iris images, credit card numbers, fingerprints and other personal information of foreign dignitaries at the United Nations and other countries.

via crowdleak.net

Of Potholes and Foresight The Road to Hanoi

By JULIAN ASSANGE

It seems like everyone I meet plans to follow the young Che Guavara, now that seduction of random latinos has been politically sanctified, and take off on their motorbike and adventure through the poverty and pleasures of South and Central America. And who can blame them? But there are other lands to explore.

Last year I rode my motorcycle from Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) to Hanoi, up the highway that borders the South China Sea.

On the road to Hanoi something caught my attention and that of every vehicle near me. We had to watch constantly and take action every few seconds or it would have killed us all.

The road to Hanoi is a Vietnamese economic artery but is nonetheless dominated by potholes, thousands the size of bomb craters. There are constant reminders of “The American War” all over Vietnam, and perhaps this was one of them, but in a more indirect way.

To a physicist a pothole has an interesting life. It starts out as a few loose stones. As wheels pass over, these stones grind together and against the under surface. Their edges are rounded off and the depression they are in also becomes rounder by their action. The stones become pestles to the hole’s motor. Smaller stones and grit move between the spaces of larger stones and add to the grinding action. The hole enlarges, and deepens. Small stones are soon entirely worn away, but in the process liberate increasingly larger stones from the advancing edge of the hole. The increasing depth and surface capture more and more energy from passing wheels. The destruction of the road surface accelerates until the road is abandoned or the hole is filled.

Road decay is, like a dental decay, a run away process. Utility rapidly diminishes and costs of repair accelerate, and just like teeth it is more efficient to fill a pothole as soon as it is noticed.

But this measure of efficiency is not the metric of politics and it is a political feedback process that lays behind the filling in of potholes on almost every road on earth.

That process is driven by the behavior of politically influential road users who are themselves motivated to action by psychologically negative encounters with potholes.

When potholes are small, the resultant political pressures are not sufficient to overcome the forces of other interests groups who compete for labour and resources. Likewise, it is difficult to motivate people who have other passions and pains in their life to go to the dentist when their teeth do not ache. Both are caused by limitations in knowledge and its distillation: foresight.

Why is this surprising? It is surprising because we are used to looking at government spending through the lens of economic utility; a lens which claims the political process as a derivative. This vision claims that political forces compete for access to the treasury to further their own utility. Hence, military intelligence and public health compete with road maintenance for funding and so should attempt to minimize the latter’s drain on the treasury. But that drain is minimized by filling in potholes immediately!

Foresight requires trustworthy information about the current state of the world, cognitive ability to draw predictive inferences and economic stability to give them a meaningful home. It’s not only in Vietnam where secrecy, malfeasance and unequal access have eaten into the first requirement of foresight (“truth and lots of it”).

Foresight can produce outcomes that leave all major interests groups better off. Likewise the lack of it, or doing the dumb thing, can harm almost everyone.

Computer scientists have long had a great phrase for the dependency of foresight on trustworthy information; “garbage in, garbage out”.

In intelligence agency oversight we have “The Black Budget blues”, but the phrase is probably most familiar to American readers as “The Fox News Effect”.

Julian Assange is president of a NGO and Australia’s most infamous former computer hacker. He was convicted of attacks on the US intelligence and publishing a magazine which inspired crimes against the Commonwealth. He is the co-author of Underground and can be reached at http://iq.org/

via counterpunch.org

30 December 2010

Pretrial Confinement Review

The command determines whether a soldier is placed into pretrial confinement.  Unlike in the civilian system, the military does not have a bail system.  In other words, once placed into pretrial confinement, a soldier will remain in pretrial confinement unless released by the command, a military magistrate or a military judge.

Under the Manual for Courts-Martial (M.C.M.), before a soldier may be placed into pretrial confinement, there must be: “probable cause” (a reasonable belief) that the soldier committed an offense triable by courts-martial; a determination that confinement is necessary because it is foreseeable that the soldier will not appear at trial or will engage in serious criminal misconduct; and a finding that lesser forms of restraint are inadequate.  See M.C.M., United States, Rule for Courts-Martial (R.C.M) 305(h)(2)(B) (2008).

The decision to confine a soldier is subject to several reviews:

     a.  The first required review must take place within 48 hours by a “neutral and detached officer.”  The neutral and detached officer must review the initial confinement decision in accordance with R.C.M. 305(i)(1) to determine whether probable cause, as detailed above, for pretrial confinement exists.

     b.  Second, within 72 hours, the commander must document the grounds for his determination in a written memorandum, along with the reasons for continued pretrial confinement.  See R.C.M. 305(h)(2)(C). Typically, if the commander is “neutral and detached” and completes his 72-hour review within 48 hours, then this single memorandum will satisfy both 48 and 72-hour review requirement.  See R.C.M. 305(h)(2)(A).

     c.  Third, under R.C.M. 305(i)(2) and Army Regulation (AR) 27-10, a judge advocate appointed as a military magistrate must, within 7 days, review “the probable cause determination and necessity for continued pretrial confinement.”  See U.S. Department of Army Regulation 27-10, Legal Services: Military Justice paragraphs 5-15, 9-5 (16 November 2005).

     d.  Fourth, after referral of charges to a court-martial, a soldier may request the military judge assigned to the case review the appropriateness of the pretrial confinement.  See R.C.M. 305(g) and (j) (Absent an abuse of discretion or new evidence establishing the soldier should be released, the military judge does not have the authority to overturn a 7-day reviewing officer’s decision that pretrial confinement should continue).

As discussed in my earlier post here, a soldier can make an Article 13 motion for unlawful pretrial punishment if the conditions of the confinement are “more rigorous than the circumstances require” to ensure the soldier’s presence at trial.  This motion, however, much like the pretrial confinement review by the military judge, must take place after referral.

Inspector General

Each service has a regulation that governs the activity of its respective Inspector General (IG).  In the Army, for instance, that regulation is Army Regulation 20-1 while in the Navy SECNAV Instruction 5430.57G details the IG’s mission and function.  While it is true that a pretrial confinee can complain to the IG about the conditions of his confinement, the IG’s role in any such case is limited.  Essentially, the IG can only investigate a complaint and then is required to turn the matter over to the command, a criminal investigative unit, or the Judge Advocate’s office. For instance:

     a)  Under Army Regulation 20-1, when the IG receives allegations of a criminal nature it must refer the matter to the Criminal Investigation Command (CID) or the Provost Marshal.  See U.S. Department of the Army Regulation 20-1, Inspector General Activities and Procedures (29 March 2002) [hereinafter AR 20-1] para. 8-10c(4)(a).  Likewise, under NAVSEC Instruction para. 7(c) the Navy Inspector General “shall avoid investigations that focus on individual criminal activity, because those types of investigations fall within the expertise and authority of NCIS.”

     b)  The IG should not intervene in situations that have other means of redress or remedy until the complainant has exhausted all administrative remedies, including appeal procedures.  In such cases, IG involvement will be limited to a due process review.  See AR 21-1, para. 4-4f-k; NAVSEC 5430.57G, para 7.  The following areas are generally not appropriate for IG intervention: courts-martial, nonjudicial punishment, evaluation reports, involuntary separation actions, reports of survey, reprimands, claims, and complaints made under Article 138, Uniform Code of Military Justice.  See AR 21-1, para 4-4j; NAVSEC 5430.57G, para 7.

Even if the Inspector General does investigate an issue, it has no power of enforcement.  Instead, the results of the investigation are turned over to the agency or command with the authority to act.  Thus, in the case of a pretrial confinement issue, this would mean the commander of the confinement facility or the Staff Judge Advocate.  In fact, the Navy IG recommends complaints regarding treatment of prisoners should be addressed directly to the Staff Judge Advocate’s Office.  See U.S. Navy Inspector General Agency, Treatment of Prisoners, at here (last visited Dec. 30 2010).

Given the above, the best chance a soldier has to address pretrial confinement conditions is to raise the issue directly with the confinement facility, the chain of command and the Staff Judge Advocate.  If relief is not granted after raising it with the confinement facility, the chain of command and the Staff Judge Advocate, then the next opportunity to address the issue is after referral with the military judge.

Posted by Army Court-Martial Defense Specialist at 8:35 PM

via armycourtmartialdefense.info

The British government has trained a paramilitary force accused of hundreds of killings in Bangladesh, according to leaked U.S. embassy cables.

The Guardian newspaper said the cables described training for members of the Rapid Action Battalion as being in “investigative interviewing techniques” and “rules of engagement.”

One cable notes that U.S. training for the battalion in counterterrorism would be illegal under U.S. law because of human rights violations.

1. The newspaper said the battalion has been accused by human rights activists of being a “death squad” responsible for more than 1,000 extra-judicial killings since it was established in 2004. In March, the battalion’s leader said it had killed 622 people in “crossfire.”

   The RAB’s use of torture has also been exhaustively documented by human rights groups, the Guardian said. In addition, officers from the paramilitary force are alleged to have been involved in kidnap and extortion, and are frequently accused of taking large bribes in return for carrying out killings.

   However, the cables reveal that British and Americans officials favor bolstering the force to strengthen counter-terrorism operations in Bangladesh. One cable describes U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty as saying the battalion is the “enforcement organization best positioned to one day become a Bangladeshi version of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

   The British training began three years ago, The Guardian said, quoting the cables.

   Asked by The Guardian about the training for the RAB, the Foreign Office said the UK government “provides a range of human rights assistance” in the country. However, the RAB’s head of training, Mejbah Uddin, told the newspaper that he was unaware of any human rights training since he was appointed last summer.

   In the most recent killings, the battalion reported that it had shot three men in separate incidents on Tuesday.

   © 2010 msnbc.com Reprints

via msnbc.msn.com

All Documents Wikileaks has on Bank Of America Fraud & Corruption will be Featured HERE.

Twitter @OperationleakS

via bankofamericasuck.com

The FBI has made its first raid on a company thought to be involved in initiating the DDoS attacks in defence of Wikileaks.org.

via webhostdir.com

Wikileaks cables on Sri Lanka. Most of these were published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten (and not yet elsewhere).

Abbreviations:
GON: Government of Norway, GOJ: Government of Japan, GSL: Government of Sri Lanka, USG: US Government, MFA: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, FM: Foreign Minister, CFA: Cease Fire Agreement, LTTE: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, SLMM: Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, TRO: Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, IDP: Internally Displaced Person

via win.tue.nl

via youtube.com

On the show this week we interview renowned filmmaker and journalist, John Pilger about his new film, The War You Don’t See, Iran and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. We then turn our attention to the chequered transcripts coming from an Arabic-language translation service in the US.

AP

Throughout this year I’ve devoted substantial attention to WikiLeaks, particularly in the last four weeks as calls for its destruction intensified.  To understand why I’ve done so, and to see what motivates the increasing devotion of the U.S. Government and those influenced by it to destroying that organization, it’s well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year:  the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world’s most powerful factions.

As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing.  The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them:  WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning.  A consensus quickly emerged in the political and media class that they are Evil Villains who must be severely punished, while those responsible for the acts they revealed are guilty of nothing.  That reaction has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagon’s own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence — zero — that any of WikiLeaks’ actions has caused even a single death.  Meanwhile, the American establishment media — even in the face of all these revelations — continues to insist on the contradictory, Orwellian platitudes that (a) there is Nothing New™ in anything disclosed by WikiLeaks and (b) WikiLeaks has done Grave Harm to American National Security™ through its disclosures.

It’s unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them.  Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold.  But what’s startling is how many citizens and, especially, “journalists” now vehemently believe that as well.  In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen — and especially a “journalist” — to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it’d be better if we didn’t know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded:

Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2010:

Daily Mail, April 7, 2010:

The Guardian, October 22, 2010:

The Guardian, October 22, 2010:

Foreign Policy, November 29, 2010:

Mother Jones, December 1, 2010:

El Pais, November 30, 2010:

TRANSLATION: U.S. maneuvered to stop High Court cases:   American embassy issued threats over the cases of ‘Guantanamo’, ‘Couso’ and ‘CIA flights’ - Politicians and Spanish prosecutors collaborated on the strategy

Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, responding to the cables from Spain, December 1, 2010:

ACLU, November 20, 2010:

Der Spiegel, December 9, 2010:

Ellen Knickmeyer, ex-Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief, The Daily Beast, October 25, 2010:

 

Sydney Morning Herald, November 29, 2010:

Salon, December 9, 2010:

BBC, December 17, 2010:

BBC, December 22, 2010:

Reuters, December, 1, 2010:

MSNBC, December 11, 2010:

The Guatemala Times, November 28, 2010:

CBS News, November 29, 2010:

The Guardian, November 30, 2010:

Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post, July 27, 2010:

The Guardian, July 25, 2010:

Those are just some of the truths that led WikiLeaks — and whoever the leaker(s) is — to sacrifice their own interests in order to disclose these secrets to the world.

via salon.com

via youtube.com

Since we here at The Nation consider our readership the most politically informed and intelligent of any publication in the country, we thought it would be informative to conduct a Nation readers’ poll to determine the Person of the Year for our own community.

The response was strong and, interestingly, WilkiLeaks founder Assange was also our clear-cut winner because, as Lorna Singh pointed out, “we need to see how we were lied to,” and, as Mike Pribula wrote, “he has reminded us about the importance of integrity in diplomacy and democratic ideals in our republic.”

via thenation.com

Today, Huffington Post published an article by Nick Davies, from the Guardian, in response to Bianca Jagger’s Huffpost article. Jagger had been critical of Davies’ role in the publication in The Guardian of the details from the police investigation report on the allegations against Julian Assange.

In his article today, Davies states that the publication of the details from the police report served the purpose of balancing out baseless speculation about the Swedish investigation. He claims it was necessary in particular to counterbalance a campaign of misinformation on the part of Wikileaks, and Julian Assange. This is very misleading.

via wlcentral.org

This is a WL Central post by x7o who is also a contributor here and who minded the shop while I was on break. I have come to respect x7o as an intelligent, articulate and precise writer and highly recommend this post.

That is why I’m including a link to this post even though I said I was leaving Julian’s Bogus Adventures in Europe alone. (So much easier said than done.)

Update: We incorrectly reported that no other publication had the full body of all the leaked cables. According to the Washington Post, however, the day after the first cables were published the Guardian had the full collection and shared it with the New York Times. Dagens it represents the first publication to reportedly acquire the entire collection, other than the New York Times, which did not have an agreement with Wikileaks.

via readwriteweb.com

The cable, released by WikiLeaks, continued: “Asked what the officials did with the stolen funds, the Beac official responded, ‘sometimes they kept it for themselves, sometimes they funnelled it to French political parties.’ Asked who received the funds, the official responded, ‘both sides, but mostly the right; especially Chirac and including Sarkozy.’ The Beac official said ‘Bongo was France’s favourite president in Africa,’ and ‘this is classic Françafrique.’”

via guardian.co.uk

WikiLeaks has blown the lid off many things in 2010 – including the US view of George Osborne.

Batman

Description of Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin by US sources in Moscow. The cable observed: “Medvedev continues to play Robin to Putin’s Batman.” Comic-book fans will know there have been five Robins, which, at two terms as president each, suggests Putin could be pulling the strings for another 40 years.

See also: Captain Russia (Putin), The Joker (Berlusconi), Dr Manhattan (Vince Cable).

Hitler

According to Colombia’s former president Alvaro Uribe the threat to Latin America posed by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez is analogous to that of Adolf Hitler in 1930s Europe. In the cable, dated 6 December 2007, he described Chávez as seeking to build a “personal empire” of “new socialism”. And of course Chávez has his own weekly chat show, just like Hitler did.

See also: Worse Than Hitler, The New Mao, A Modern-day Vladimir Putin.

The Necessary Gravitas

Quality lacked by George Osborne, according to a cable from October 2008, when it was decided that David Cameron rather than Osborne should deliver a key speech because “polling indicated that Osborne was seen as lightweight and inexperienced, in part due to his high-pitched vocal delivery”. (And in part due to his inexperience, and the fact he was a bit of a lightweight.)

See also: The Necessary Mandate (quality lacked by Nick Clegg).

OpenLeaks

Splinter site set up by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He told reporters: “We felt that WikiLeaks was developing in the wrong direction.” OpenLeaks differs from its father site in taking leaks directly from the whistleblower to a trusted selection of news organisations.

See also: WikiLeaksleaks, WikiLeaksleaksleaks.

Emperor Without Clothes

Description of Nicolas Sarkozy from a cable released on the first day of leaks. The source was parroting a Le Monde article referring to Sarkozy’s failure to produce a turnaround in the French economy. Sarkozy was also described as possessing an “authoritarian personal style”, possibly because he insists on wearing a prison guard’s outfit and carrying a cane.

See also: Prime Minister With Platform Shoes.

Hacktivist

The use of “non-violent” but frequently illegal “digital tools” to pursue political ends. Hacktivists supporting WikiLeaks tend to be part of the group known as Anonymous, which orchestrated retaliatory attacks on, among others, Mastercard and Visa’s websites after they refused to process donations to the whistle-blowing site.

See also: Hacktivism, Hacktivity Pack, Hacktivia.

Voluptuous Blonde Description of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s Ukrainian nurse, 38-year-old Galyna Kolotnytska, who travels with him everywhere because only she “knows his routine”.

See also: Unctuous Brunette (George Osborne).

Teflon

Nickname given to the German chancellor, as in Angela “Teflon” Merkel, so called because “so little sticks to her”. The original, more scientific nickname Polytetrafluoroethylene disappointingly failed to catch on.

See also: Silvio “Velcro” Berlusconi (everything sticks to him, but no one minds).

Operation Payback

Originally a response to attacks on file-sharing websites orchestrated by opponents of internet piracy, Anonymous’s Operation Payback has now morphed to become a defence of the WikiLeaks site and founder Assange. Worth viewing in the context of previous Anonymous actions, such as Operation Titstorm, an attack on Australian legislators attempting to censor pornography, and “YouTube porn day”, which is probably self-explanatory.

See also: Operation Avenge Assange, Operation Assuage Assange, Operation Photoshop Breasts On Assange.

via guardian.co.uk