A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• A Wikileaks Christmas
• Who is best to keep unnecessary secrets now?
• Israel, the US and corporate press selling Iranian “threat” for decades
• Yes, Wikileaks matters deeply

A Wikileaks Christmas Posted: 01 Jan 2011 04:19 AM PST Anything to keep the case in the public eye? Thank you, Newsweek, for this delightful photo gallery: The holidays are a time of rest and relaxation for everyone, even enigmatic, internationally wanted former fugitives under house arrest. In an exclusive photo gallery, NEWSWEEK peeks into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange‘s Christmas revelry as he awaits a British court’s decision on whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face sexual-assault charges. Here, he tours the grounds of his detention (a British country mansion) with his hat slung rakishly to the side.

Who is best to keep unnecessary secrets now? Posted: 01 Jan 2011 01:24 AM PST The job of real journalists and citizens is to challenge government spin and lies and not feel sorry for a super-power being less able to get its way: Before the infamous leak, the 250,000 State Department cables acquired by anti-secrecy activists resided in a database so obscure that few diplomats had heard of it. It had a bureaucratic name, Net-Centric Diplomacy, and served an important mission: the rapid sharing of information that could help uncover threats against the United States. But like many bureaucratic inventions, it expanded beyond what its creators had imagined. It also contained risks that no one foresaw. Millions of people around the world now know that the State Department’s secret cables became the property of WikiLeaks. But only recently have investigators understood the critical role played by Net-Centric Diplomacy, a computer initiative that became the conduit for what was perhaps the biggest heist of sensitive U.S. government documents in modern times. Partly because of its design but also because of confusion among its users, the database became an inadvertent repository for a vast array of State Department cables, including records of the U.S. government’s most sensitive discussions with foreign leaders and diplomats. Unfortunately for the department, the system lacked features to detect the unauthorized downloading by Pentagon employees and others of massive amounts of data, according to State Department officials and information-security experts. The result was a disastrous setback for U.S. diplomatic efforts around the globe. “This was as bad as it gets,” said Patrick F. Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, referring to the diplomatic fallout. “We had, over the course of many years, built up a huge amount of faith and trust. That’s ruptured now, all over the world.”

Israel, the US and corporate press selling Iranian “threat” for decades Posted: 31 Dec 2010 04:53 PM PST It must be resisted now as much as ever.

Yes, Wikileaks matters deeply Posted: 31 Dec 2010 04:24 PM PST Read on.