Wikileaks

WASHINGTON — A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. 

Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. 

WikiLeaks posted 220 cables, some redacted to protect diplomatic sources, in the first installment of the archive on its Web site on Sunday. 

The disclosure of the cables is sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.” 

Review at least one of the Wikileaks stories and respond below.  Do you think it is irresponsible to leak this information, or do people have a right to know?  Should the head of Wikileaks be punished?

Does this violate our 4th amendment right?

4th Amendment Right: <The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized>

Thanksgiving travelers learn to cope with 'scope and grope'

By Jonathan Mann, CNN

November 26, 2010 7:00 a.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• U.S. security authorities have begun the use of pat downs as well as body scanners
• Some passengers liken the procedure to a sexual assault, others refuse to participate
• Such searches are familiar to many international air travelers
• Obama: Authorities have indicated such procedures are the only ones right now they consider to be effective."

"Our Mann in America" is a weekly column discussing the big talking points in the U.S. for an international audience. Jonathan Mann is an anchor for CNN International and the host of Political Mann.

(CNN) -- -- America is feeling invaded by a uniformed force moving into some very private places, with a mission that's being decried as "scope and grope."

"They want to take pictures of us and put their hands in our pants," said Republican Congressman Ron Paul. "If we tolerate this, there's something wrong with us.

"They" are the officials of the Transportation Security Administration, which tightened its airport screening procedures after a suspected terrorist tried to blow-up an airliner with a bomb in his underwear. So, in addition to the airport security routine that passengers are accustomed to, many now have to submit to revealing high-tech imaging that sees through their clothes. If they refuse, they're subjected to a fully-clothed but startlingly invasive physical search. (Hence the catchy rhyme about "scope and grope").

The TSA has withheld precise details of the hands-on search techniques but its screeners, deployed by gender to match the passengers they scrutinize, do pass their hands around or over the breasts, buttocks and genitals.

Cancer survivor accepts TSA apology

Avoiding the scanners

Do airport body scanners even work?

Pat downs: Security vs. privacy

Needless to say, it's the kind of interaction that gets your attention. Similar techniques may be familiar to experienced international travelers, but in the U.S. they were introduced to the flying public only a month ago without extensive explanation or publicity.

There may be some easy irony in the observation that a country which launched a global war on terror with countless casualties now objects to a few awkward moments at the airport.

But it's no laughing matter to travelers who complain that TSA employees have interpreted their new instructions in uneven and sometimes unfortunate ways.

Passenger Erin Chase likened her ordeal to sexual assault by a TSA screener who, "went all the way up my legs, up my inner thighs, all along my inner thighs until she reached my genital area, touched both sides."

Cancer survivor Tom Sawyer says that a TSA officer burst a special bag that captures his urine, with no time to change clothes before his flight.

"By the time he was done, I had a round spot of urine maybe the size of a small pancake, something like that and I had urine dribbling down into my underwear, down my leg on my shorts."

The horror stories are legion, leavened only by tales of defiance that are quickly spreading as well.

One passenger's warning to a screener -- "Don't touch my junk" -- has become a national protest slogan, immortalized in music, T-shirts and countless comedy routines.

Another passenger travelling through Los Angeles wore a coat with nothing but a bikini underneath, because she said she didn't want a hand-search and thought she could save time.

Even President Barack Obama was drawn into the drama, fittingly perhaps, while he was on a trip of his own, to Portugal.

"One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us," he said.

"But at this point, TSA, in consultation with our counter-terrorism experts, have indicated to me that the procedures that they've been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective."

One passenger's warning to a screener -- "Don't touch my junk" -- has become a national protest slogan, immortalized in music, T-shirts and countless comedy routines

RELATED TOPICS

• Air Travel
• Transportation Security

Twenty-four million passengers are expected to pass through American airports this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the business travel seasons of the year.

Some had threatened a disruptive protest, but the threat never materialized.

In fact, a USA Today/Gallup poll found most travelers are prepared to give-up some of their personal privacy to prevent terrorism. The trouble hinges on the technique.

A clear 57 percent majority say they are not bothered by a full-body scan. But the same percentage say they are bothered or angry about the prospect of a hands-on search.

To quote that now timeless phrase: don't touch my junk.

Republican lawmakers are threatening legislation to outlaw the searches. The rights activists at the American Civil Liberties Union are collecting travelers complaints and funneling them to the government.

But airports across the country are still crowded. The travelers passing through them seem as eager as ever, and as annoyed as ever, for any one of a number of reasons related to the ordeals of air travel in the 21st century.

No one seems to enjoy the obligatory airport intimacy but mindful of the threat of terrorism, most people seem willing to endure it.

Seven Charged in Kosovo Organ Traficking Ring

PRAGUE — At least seven people have been charged with participating in an international organ-trafficking network based in Kosovo that sold kidneys and other organs from impoverished victims for up to $200,000 to patients from as far away as Israel and Canada, police and senior European Union officials said Monday.
According to the indictment, the traffickers lured people from slums in Istanbul, Moscow, Moldova and Kazakhstan with promises of up to $20,000 for their organs. Law enforcement officials say many never received a cent. The operations were performed at a private clinic in a run-down neighborhood on the outskirts of Pristina, the Kosovar capital.

While the ring was first discovered two years ago, the global scale of the network and its victims is only now becoming clear.

Officials said the ringleader was a highly regarded surgeon and professor at Pristina University Hospital, Dr. Lutfi Dervishi. The clinic was run by his son, Arban. Also charged was Ilir Rrecaj, a senior official in Kosovo’s Health Ministry when the ring was broken. They and two others are accused of crimes including trafficking in humans and body parts, unlawful medical activity, participating in organized crime, and abuse of office. All were released on bail.

The charges have shaken Kosovo, which has been struggling to integrate with the West since it declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. The case is also a test of the nascent legal institutions and rule of law as Kosovo seeks to overcome a culture of endemic lawlessness and corruption that has reached the highest levels of government.

The trafficking network’s tentacles reached far. Warrants were issued for a Turkish doctor and an Israeli financier, and two other doctors, an Israeli and a Turk, were named as co-conspirators.
The police said the ring had its roots at a medical conference in 2006 in Istanbul, where Dr. Dervishi met the Turkish doctor being sought, Yusuf Sonmez. Law enforcement officials describe Dr. Sonmez as a notorious international organ trafficker.

The Medicus clinic had been founded by a European philanthropist who aided ethnic Albanian doctors during the war in Kosovo in 1999. Dr. Dervishi, police officials said, secretly transformed it into a hub for illegal organ transplants, which were performed by Dr. Sonmez.

The indictment was first reported by The Associated Press. In it, a European Union prosecutor, Jonathan Ratel, said that in 2008, 20 foreign nationals living in “extreme poverty or acute financial distress” were “recruited with the false promises of payments.”

The police said they broke the ring in November of that year, when a young Turkish man, Yilman Altun, was found at the Pristina airport, weak and frail. Mr. Altun told the police that his kidney had been stolen. When the police raided the Medicus clinic, they discovered an elderly Israeli man who had received Mr. Altun’s kidney.

European Union officials said that the indictment in the case had been filed in district court in Kosovo and that a preliminary hearing was expected by the end of the year. If a judge confirms the charges, a trial will follow.
The European Union has a large law enforcement mission in Kosovo to combat crime and corruption. But that fight has proved difficult, with suspicions of bribes, money laundering, organized crime, fraud and now organ trafficking, ensnaring high-level government officials.

Several countries are examining the Kosovo ring, with police investigators combing through the phone records, computer hard drives and bank transfers of those charged. European Union officials said the recipients paid for the kidneys by bank transfers, helping lead the police to the main suspects.
Western law enforcement officials said they suspected the ring might be part of a larger criminal network whose nexus was in Israel. In September, five doctors from South Africa were charged with participating in an international kidney-trading syndicate in which dozens of poor Brazilians and Romanians were paid for kidneys for wealthy Israelis. Analysts said the organ-trafficking case was part of a disturbing global trend in which unscrupulous traffickers take advantage of the growing waiting lists of desperate patients and the vulnerability of poor people further buffeted by the international financial crisis.

In the United States, more than 109,000 people are on the waiting list for organ transplants, mostly kidneys, and 18 die each day, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the American transplant system.

Should we keep the death penalty?

Abu-Jamal death sentence to be argued in court

By the CNN Wire Staff

November 9, 2010 3:11 a.m. EST

 

(CNN) -- The death penalty imposed on Mumia Abu-Jamal will be argued again in a federal appeals court Tuesday.

Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, was convicted of gunning down a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police officer more than 28 years ago.
He has been an outspoken activist from behind bars, claiming there were procedural errors during his capital sentencing, and that too few blacks were on the jury.
In 2008, a federal appeals court ruled in Abu-Jamal's favor saying that the jury instructions given at his trial were flawed. The decision nullified Abu-Jamal's death sentence and granted him a new sentencing hearing.
But in January, the Supreme Court tossed out the appeals court ruling. The Supreme Court also ordered the federal appeals court to revisit its ruling and that will occur Tuesday.
The appeals court now has the option of reimposing the death sentence or ordering a new federal trial to hear other claims of injustice raised by Abu-Jamal.
The case has attracted international attention, amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct and the inmate's outspoken personality.
The onetime radio reporter and cab driver has been a divisive figure, with many prominent supporters arguing that racism pervaded his trial.
Others countered Abu-Jamal is using his skin color to escape responsibility for his actions. They say he has provoked community unrest for years with his writings and advocacy.
He was convicted for the December 9, 1981, murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner, 25, in Philadelphia. Faulkner had pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in a late-night traffic stop. Witnesses said Abu-Jamal, who was nearby, ran over and shot the policeman in the back and in the head.
Abu-Jamal, once known as Wesley Cook, was wounded in the encounter and later confessed to the killing, according to other witness testimony.

Incarcerated for nearly three decades, Abu-Jamal has been an active critic of the criminal justice system.

Activist Tells of Torture in North Korea Prison By MARK McDONALD

SEOUL, South Korea — An evangelical activist from Arizona, imprisoned by North Korea last year after he illegally entered the country on Christmas Day, appeared Wednesday on South Korean television and spoke for the first time about his treatment by his captors.

The activist, Robert Park, 29, a Korean-American who was released in February after 43 days of detention, gave a harrowing account of his imprisonment, which he said included beatings, torture and sexual abuse.
“The scars and wounds of the things that happened to me in North Korea are too intense,” Mr. Park said in an interview with the South Korean broadcaster KBS. “As a result of what happened to me in North Korea, I’ve thrown away any kind of personal desire. I will never, you know, be able to have a marriage or any kind of relationship.”

Mr. Park said he attempted suicide soon after he returned to the United States. He told the magazine Christianity Today that he had been “in and out” of psychiatric hospitals for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had crossed into North Korea over the frozen Tumen River, which forms the border with China. He carried only a Bible and some letters urging the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, to close prison labor camps in the North, free all its prisoners and resign.

Analysts in Seoul said such personal affronts to Mr. Kim were forbidden in the North and typically drew long prison terms or death sentences. But Mr. Park told friends in Seoul before he left that he would die with political prisoners in the North if Mr. Kim refused to free them.

Mr. Park read a confession on North Korean television, after which North Korean officials said they “decided to leniently forgive and release him, taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrongdoings into consideration,” according to a report at the time by the North’s official news agency, K.C.N.A.
But Mr. Park said Wednesday that the apology was a fake, and that the statement had been dictated to him.
He said that he had a new appreciation for the harshness and cynicism of the North Korean government, which he vowed to devote his life to fighting.

“They have really thought about this,” he said. “How can we kill these people? How can we starve these people? How can we enslave these people? How can we control these people?”
Robert R. King, President Obama’s envoy on North Korean human rights issues, has called North Korea “one of the worst places in terms of lack of human rights.”

Drug Trafficking... What do you think?

Clinton: U.S. can do more to help Mexico fight drug cartels

By the CNN Wire Staff

October 16, 2010 5:33 a.m. EDT

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said drug cartels in Mexico are acting like terror groups in terms of their organization and brutality.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Clinton speaks at a club in San Francisco
• She compares drug cartels in Mexico to terror groups
• Remarks come the same week she talked about the Falcon Lake case

(CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. can do more to help Mexico battle drug cartels that have started operating more like terrorists and insurgent groups.
"It is one of my highest priorities," Clinton said Friday during a speech in San Francisco at the nonpartisan Commonwealth Club. "This is one of the most difficult fights that any country faces today. We saw it over the last couple of decades in Colombia."
"We are watching drug traffickers undermine and corrupt governments in Central America, and we are watching the brutality and barbarity of their assaults on governors and mayors, the press, as well as each other, in Mexico," she added.
Clinton said the U.S. can do more than sending the Blackhawk helicopters it promised Mexico.

 

Video: 'Pirate Lake' mystery

 

She said the U.S. is helping Mexico create an anonymous tipline to report drug cartels. However, she said, it can also help Mexico rebuild its criminal system and train its police force.
She likened recent drug cartel violence to terror groups.
"For the first time, they are using car bombings," Clinton said. "You see them being much more organized in a kind of paramilitary way."
Clinton's remarks come the same week she discussed the U.S. effort to find David Hartley, an American believed to have been shot by drug bandits on the border of Mexico and Texas.
The United States is "supporting local law enforcement, supporting the authorities on the border, doing everything that we know to do to try to assist in helping to find the body and helping to find the perpetrators," she said.

Hartley is reported to have been shot during a September 30 boating trip by gunmen investigators believe are linked to a Mexican drug gang.

Should America follow in their northern brothers footsteps?

Canadian judge strikes down prostitution law

By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN

September 29, 2010 7:50 p.m. EDT

Terri-Jean Bedford, left, Valerie Scott and another sex worker sued to overturn Canada's prostitution laws.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Federal, provincial government plan appeal in the interest of public safety
• Judge rules that laws regulating prostitution do more harm than good to sex workers
• Sex workers claimed laws forced them onto streets to face threats of violence
• "I like the work, I like the people, I like the clients, I set my own hours," sex worker says

RELATED TOPICS

• Prostitution and Sex Workers
• Canada

(CNN) -- Key provisions of Canada's prostitution law were struck down Tuesday by an Ontario judge who said they endangered the people they were meant to protect.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Susan Himel sided with three sex workers who argued that restrictions on prostitution in Canada's Criminal Code forced them onto the streets to conduct business under threats of arrest and violence.
The Canadian government will appeal the decision and seek a stay of its enforcement, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Wednesday.
If the judge's ruling stands, sex workers will be able to legally conduct business from their homes and brothels, communicate freely with customers in public places and hire employees, such as drivers, receptionists and accountants, to help run prostitution businesses.
As of Tuesday, the ruling was set to take effect in 30 days so the government can figure out how to address its potential consequences.
If it does take effect, it will only apply to Ontario until the Canada Supreme Court weighs in on the matter. The provincial government also plans to join the federal government's appeal and prevent it from being immediately enforced, a spokesman for Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General said.
"Ontario's position at the Superior Court was that these provisions of the Criminal Code are designed to prevent individuals, particularly young people, from being drawn into prostitution, to protect our communities from the negative impacts of street prostitution and to ensure that those who control, coerce or abuse prostitutes are held accountable for their actions. Thus, in our view, they are consistent with the core Charter values of human dignity and equality," spokesman Brendan Crawley said in an e-mail.
For Valerie Scott, one of the sex workers named in the lawsuit, the case was about the "blatant hypocrisy" of Canadian law.
"In theory, I can't be arrested simply for being a known prostitute, but practicing the profession is illegal," said Scott, 52. "I file income tax as a sex worker... I have that responsibility, but I don't have the rights that come with the responsibility."
Scott has worked on the streets, in massage parlors and as an exotic dancer since her teens. She said she and the other women named in the suit -- Terri-Jean Bedford and Amy Lebovitch -- raised the challenge on behalf of sex workers who want to operate legitimate businesses, complete with zoning permits, reimbursable expenses and workers' compensation.
"When I began all this I just wanted to be a sex worker, but I recognized pretty clearly and quickly that in order to be so, I have to change the laws of the country, and it's a big job," Scott said. "I never thought I'd spend my afternoons studying company law and income tax, municipal zoning regulations."
The constitutional challenge dealt with three provisions that prohibit keeping a common bawdy house, or brothel, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of the trade.
In the ruling, Himel noted that even though the act of prostitution is not illegal in Canada, "Parliament has seen fit to criminalize most aspects of prostitution," violating the sex workers' constitutional rights.
Read the judge's decision (PDF)
"These laws, individually and together, force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of person as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms," Himel wrote in a 132-page decision. "I find that the danger faced by prostitutes greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by other members of the public."
The lawsuit was launched in an effort to bring Canada's policies in line with countries like New Zealand and Australia, where prostitution has been decriminalized, said Alan Young, a lawyer for the sex workers.
"Our position was if you remove certain legal provisions, you can conduct sex work in a safer way," the York University law school professor said.
Even so, Scott said the ruling was completely unexpected.
"We're not used to good news. We had several different press releases prepared but we didn't even bother to write one where we won everything," said Scott, the executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, which advocates for the decriminalization of prostitution.
"We didn't think it would be possible."
Witnesses for both sides agreed that all prostitution carries a risk of violence and significant social stigma, Himel wrote in her decision, summing up more than two years' worth of evidence, discovery and testimony in the case.
Key matters in dispute were whether indoor prostitution is safer than street prostitution and whether current laws did sex workers more harm than good, Himel wrote.
Lawyers for the applicants submitted affidavits from current and former sex workers who shared the view that prostitution conducted in indoor venues was generally safer than street prostitution. They described strategies for ensuring safety, from working in a familiar environment to verifying services, prices and contact information with clients before an encounter, according to the judge's decision.
The clandestine nature of prostitution forces sex workers to establish client contacts hastily and without opportunity to assess the situation, experts on behalf of the sex workers testified. Provisions in the law limited the places and ways in which prostitution could be practiced safely and led to reluctance to report robberies or attacks, witnesses for the applicants said.
Former and current sex workers speaking for the government told stories of violence and drug abuse perpetrated by pimps and johns, the judge wrote. Crown experts said that no form of prostitution is safe because it is an inherently harmful form of violence against women.
The judge also heard from police officers from across Canada with experience in enforcing prostitution-related provisions. They generally characterized sex workers as victims, commonly poverty-stricken and drug-addicted. Prostitution, the judge wrote, was generally described as a harmful activity with links to drugs, violence, organized crime and child exploitation.
Under cross-examination, the officers conceded that the level of violence on the street is worse than it is indoors, and that safety precautions can be taken in indoor locations to reduce violence, the judge noted.
Scott said she applied to the University of Toronto's business school with a business plan for running a brothel and was accepted. She plans to attend in April.

"I like the work, I like the people, I like the clients, I set my own hours, I set my own price structure, I call the shots with what I will and will not do," she said. "Personally, I took to sex work like a duck to water. If it's for you, if the person likes the job, it can be a very good job. And that's what it is -- a job. It's not a lifestyle."

What is United World?

This blog is designed to enhance your global competency.  I will post article or statements, and you are required to read and comment on the issues.  Please use this to think freely.  Analyze the issues, and think creatively as to why this issue is relevant to achieving international awareness, and what solutions can be put into action to improve the lives of others.  Be sure to also open your mind to others perspectives, and relate what they are feeling to your own opinions.  And of course, enjoy the experience!!!!