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1. The Disgraced So-Called Guardians Of Free Speech

Something has changed. Reality is no longer what the powerful say it is. Of all the spectacular revolts across the world, the most exciting is the insurrection of knowledge sparked by WikiLeaks. On 3 March, the Guardian announced that Stephen Spielberg’s Dream Works was to make "an investigative thriller in the mold of All the President’s Men" out of its book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. I asked David Leigh, who wrote the book with Luke Harding, how much Spielberg had paid the Guardian for the screen rights and what he expected to make personally. "No idea," was the puzzling reply of the Guardian’s "investigations editor." The Guardian paid WikiLeaks nothing for its treasure trove of leaks. Assange and WikiLeaks — not Leigh or Harding — are responsible for what the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, calls "one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years." The Guardian has made clear it has no further use for Assange. He is a loose cannon who did not fit Guardianworld, who proved a tough, unclubbable negotiator. And brave. In the Guardian’s self-regarding book, Assange’s extraordinary bravery is excised. It is difficult to describe, let alone imagine, the sense of isolation and state of siege of Julian Assange, who in one form or another is paying for tearing aside the façade of rapacious power. The canker here is not the far right but the paper-thin liberalism of those who guard the limits of free speech.
John Pilger, AntiWar.com

2. Police Interrogator In Assange Sex Case Is Accuser's Long-Time Buddy

Anna Ardin took trophy photo of Julian Assange after sex
(Caption & pic courtesy of One Click)
The police interrogator in the Julian Assange investigation is a friend of one of the two women who is accusing the Wikileaks founder of sexual assault, Expressen can now reveal. Personal remarks on the internet reveal that the interrogator and the woman who reported Julian Assange had contact already in April 2009. This was sixteen months before Assange was reported to the police for, amongst others, rape allegations. On her own Facebook page the police interrogator two weeks ago praised the lawyer of the two women and described Assange as the "overrated bubble ready to burst". Already sixteen months before Julian Assange came to Sweden, invited by the woman who later reported him, the police interrogator and the woman had open correspondence through the internet. It has been decided that questions about the police handling of this matter will be answered by Ulf Göranzon (the police press officer) and questions about the ongoing investigat ion will be answered by the prosecutor. What do you say to those who mean that the public trust for the police has been tarnished by the fact that one of the investigators is a friend of one of the plaintiffs?
Berättande Som Berör, Expressen
Related Links:
Investigation: Interpol and Julian Assange's Red Notice
Tess Lawrence, Truthout

3. Consexual Sense - Assange Case

As WikiLeaks' front man Julian Assange appeals his order in London for extradition to Sweden and prosecution for four accusations ranging from rape to sexual misconduct, I’ve been wondering from distant shores if Sweden isn’t experiencing its own Helen Garner moment. Like the Garner scandal, there is a clear disjunct between the nature of the allegations and proportional legal redress, not to mention public perception of all those involved, claimants and accused. Assange himself dubbed Sweden the ‘Saudi Arabia of feminism’ and prosecutor Marianne Ny now stands accused of being a ‘radical feminist’ and ‘preoccupied’ with women’s victimisation and ‘biased’ against men. For many observers at issue is how decades of rape law reform, as demanded by feminists, can be misappropriated by lawyers to expedite the unrelated legal process of Assange’s extradition by the US. The d anger arising from the Assange charges is that, after decades of feminist reform, rape will return to the status of a mere ‘annoyance’.
Liz Connor, ABC

4. Anonymous Hive Mind Targets Bradley Manning Jailers

The Pentagon said Tuesday it had requested an investigation into a hacker group's reported cyber threat against a military base that is being used to hold a US soldier suspected of giving documents to WikiLeaks. Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said the probe was requested after news that the hacker group called Anonymous was seeking to disrupt online activities at the Quantico, Virginia, base where Private Bradley Manning is incarcerated. The Financial Times reported that hackers known as "Anonymous," which had claimed credit for attacks supporting WikiLeaks in recent months, was seeking to disrupt communications at the US Marine base. Manning, 23, has been held at the prison since July under a maximum security regimen because authorities say his escape would pose a risk to national security. His defense lawyers have filed a legal complaint over the conditions of his detention at Quantico, which include a "prevention of injury" watch, which his lawyer said includes being forced to sleep naked. His supporters say the regimen is inhumane and has been deemed unnecessary by psychiatric experts.
AFP
Related Links:
* Inhumanity at Quantico
Scott Horton, Harper's Magazine

5. Swine Flu: Politicians Must Learn From Their Pharma Mistakes

The EU's response to the outbreak of the H1N1 ("swine flu") virus in 2009-2010 is scrutinised and found wanting in a resolution adopted by Parliament on Tuesday which weighs up the cost of vaccination programmes and the relative risks. Suggestions for the future include group purchases of vaccines and tighter safeguards against conflicts of interest. Michèle Rivasi (Greens/EFA, FR), who drafted the report and resolution for the Environment Committee, commented "This report is an important attempt to highlight the concerns that have been raised about the disproportionate response to swine flu in Europe, as well as the potential influence of pharmaceutical companies in response processes." Assessments of and communication about flu outbreaks must be more independent, says the resolution. Safeguards are needed to prevent conflicts of interest. For example, declarations of interest by experts who advise European health authorities should be published. And under EU legislation, full liability for vaccines must lie with the manufacturer, not with Member States.
Press Release, European Parliament

6. Open Letter To Director General, World Health Organisation - Vaccines

Drug Action Forum – Karnataka (DAF-K) is an independent, non-government organization, registered society campaigning for rational use of vaccines and medicines. We would like to bring to your notice the National Vaccine Policy commissioned by the Ministry of Health And Family Welfare (MoH&FW), Government of India, under the guidance of Prof N K Ganguly, Former Director of General ICMR. Is it honest for WHO to say that vaccines against pneumonia and diarrhea are available when the disease is caused by numerous etiological pathogens and there are vaccines against only 3 of the pathogens and that too covering a few strains only. This is particularly pertinent in Asia where Hib vaccine has not reduced the burden of pneumonia disease. What is the WHO's latest stand on the standard Brighton classification of Adverse Effects Following Immunization? Has the WHO abandoned this classification? If it has not abandoned the Brighton Collaboration classificat ion does it have any another classification for poor countries like the one used in Sri Lanka when investigating the deaths from Pentavalent vaccine? Your clarification on the WHO stand on these issues will pave the way for us to take this matter with the Government of India.
Dr Gopal Dabade MD, President, Drug Action Forum – Karnataka

7. Chicken Pox/Shingles Virus Transmitted By The Vaccinated

Varicella zoster virus DNA was detected in subjects’ saliva for a month after immunization with the Zostavax herpes zoster vaccine in a prospective study. Genotypic analysis demonstrated that the varicella zoster virus that was present in saliva was indeed the Zostavax live attenuated vaccine virus, Dr. Catherine M. DiGiorgio said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. The next step is to determine whether this virus that is being shed in saliva and at inoculation sites after immunization is infectious. If so, it’s possible that herpes zoster infection might be transmitted through recently immunized individuals. That would be highly unwelcome news. Dr. DiGiorgio and her coworkers have recently shown that a positive family history increases the risk of developing shingles, and that patients with post-herpetic neuralgia can shed VZV in their saliva for years.
Bruce Jancin, Internal Medicine News

8. XMRV ME/CFS: Cover-Up & Contamination Theories, Attenuated Virus Vaccines

This abstract was presented at CROI a few days ago: XMRV Probably Originated through Recombination between 2 Endogenous Murine Retroviruses during in vivo Passage of a Human Prostate Cancer Xenograft. Many questions arise without the full paper, but it seems that far from showing XMRV to be a lab contaminant, the study shows what may in fact have happened. Endogenous retroviruses recombined in or infected human tumor cells through subsequent passages in vivo (in mouse) to produce a fully replicative xenotropic exogenous retrovirus, that in fact may prove to be the most infectious human retrovirus yet. My guess is that passing lots of human tissue through mice and then culturing in the laboratory for now more than four decades produced the conditions to enable a very unlikely event - by giving it many chances to occur. A probable place for this to have happened was in the creation of live attenuated virus vaccines where virus is made less virulent with multiple passes through animal cells in tissue culture. Mouse cells and the cells of other species have also been used over the years in the creation of other vaccines. Another place for it to have happened or to be happening, as demonstrated by the Paprotka CROI presentation, is in the creation of human to mouse xenografts. Putting it all together, it seems quite plausible that batches of vaccines containing retroviruses that are infectious to humans have been going out for over half a century. Much of what I've written here has been known but ignored for a long time. The assumption was made that endogenous animal retroviruses couldn't harm people. It's becoming clear that this was a very incorrect assumption.
Dr Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD

9. UK Census 2011: Police Have Fishing Expedition Rights To Your Data

Information from this month's UK census is at risk of confidentiality breaches from data being shared with policing or intelligence services, a leading law professor has warned. Census data may be shared with other organisations if it is deemed to be in the interests of national security, says Douwe Korff, professor of international law at London Metropolitan University. "The legal safeguards against breaches of confidentiality are so flimsy as to be useless. In a democracy under the rule of law, one should not have to rely on blind trust in the authorities; the law should guarantee restraint. The law that applies to the census data does not stand in the way of the UK police, or intelligence services, foreign law enforcement agencies or secret services, seeking access - not just in exceptional cases but for general "trawling" or "fishing expeditions," says Korff. This could lead to data being used to create terrorist prof iles or general profiles for policy-making, such as labelling young children as "probable" future criminals, or likely to become pregnant while still a teenager, he adds.
Kathleen Hall, Computer Weekly
Related Links:
* Surveillance State: Fury As Cops Given Access To Your File
Neil Chandler, Daily Star
* ConDem Government Provokes £480m Worth Of Civil Unrest - UK Census 2011
Brian Reade, Daily Mirror
* UK Census 2011: ConDem Government vs. Electorate Unrest
JP Floru, Adam Smith Institute
* UK ConDem Government Launches Census 2011 Bureaucratic Assault
Ian Dunt, politics.co.uk
* The census has become far too nosey
Philip Johnston, Daily Telegraph
* Census spies will track every home: Anger at 'intrusion of vast computer network'
Steve Doughty, Daily Mail

10. Child Snatching By Social Services & UK Courts To Be Investigated

Tim Loughton, the children's minister
An independent Ombudsman could be appointed to investigate cases in which social workers and the courts are accused of taking children from their homes without justification. Tim Loughton, the children's minister, is considering the landmark step after he grew concerned over a number of cases where children have been wrongly taken and placed for adoption. The move follows claims by campaigners that social workers are too eager to take children into care in cases where there is little clear-cut evidence they have been abused by their parents. They also claim that secretive family courts too readily endorse the actions of social workers at the expense of children's best interests.
Patrick Sawer, Telegraph

11. Avoiding contempt of court: Tips for bloggers and tweeters

Last week the High Court convicted two newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Sun (UK), of contempt of court for the publication on their websites of a photograph of a man toting a gun during the ongoing criminal trial of that man. They are now likely to face large fines. It was the first such case of contempt relating to an online publication. My post generated comments from concerned bloggers and tweeters asking what this meant for contempt and online publishing going forward. This is a hard question to answer as it mostly depends on which cases the Attorney General choses to prosecute. But, although the following is not legal advice, reviewing the case-law on contempt provides some indication of may be to come, and common-sense ways in which publishers, including tweeters and bloggers, can avoid being prosecuted.
Adam Wagner, One Crown Office Row
Related Links:
* Tweet Record, Julian Assange Extradition Trial Judgement Day 2011-02-24
Information Release, The One Click Group et al
* Tweet Record, Julian Assange Extradition Trial 2011-02-11
The One Click Group et al
* Tweet Record, Julian Assange Extradition Trial 2011-02-08
The One Click Group et al
* Tweet Record, Julian Assange Extradition Trial 2011-02-07
The One Click Group et al

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