The world's most wanted house guest - Independent

For the past fortnight, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has been at the centre of a global firestorm. Wanted by Interpol, by the Swedish police, even, briefly, by Scotland Yard, he has been called a terrorist and a revolutionary. Several leading American politicians and commentators have called for him to be killed, while Russia and China have also been loud in their condemnation. Yesterday, Assange appeared at City of Westminster magistrates’ court to fight extradition to Sweden on sex charges that he says are politically motivated. He was granted bail – subject to an appeal by Swedish prosecutors that could see him spend a further 48 hours in custody – on condition that he provides a security of ?200,000 to the court, with a further ?40,000 guaranteed in two sureties of ?20,000 each – and that he spends between now and 11 January as the house guest of Captain Vaughan Smith, a former Grenadier Guard and founder of the journalists' Frontline Club.

He will be under curfew every day from 10pm to 2am and from 10am to 2pm and will be required to report daily to the police from 6pm to 8pm. He must spend every night at Cpt Smith's home and will be electronically tagged.

Mr Assange has for several months been staying as a guest of Cpt Smith and other members at the Frontline Club in London, which he founded seven years ago to stand for independence and transparency, and he has also stayed at Cpt Smith's home in Suffolk. Below is Cpt Smith's account of the past weeks...

Having watched Julian Assange give himself up last week to the British justice system, I took the decision that I would do whatever else it took to ensure that he is not denied his basic rights as a result of the anger of the powerful forces he has enraged.

This decision – which will result in one of the most unusual Christmases I have ever experienced – began to take shape last Monday night, as we gathered round a computer in my home, talking via Skype to Mark Stephens, Julian’s solicitor, in London.

This is how I remember the scene...

It is late in the evening. The screen periodically goes to sleep and Sue, a friend, keeps tapping the keyboard to keep it awake, relighting their faces.

Julian is completely still except his foot, which he rocks from side to side. I remember being told that he always did this when he was concentrating.

I feel that I am intruding, but Julian smiles at me. He does that: brings you in and makes you feel you are important to him when most of us would feel too preoccupied to do such a thing.

Julian is in front of a computer all the time. Immersed and uninterruptable; you feel you could arrive in a clown suit and he wouldn’t notice you.

But often you can gently greet him while he is typing furiously and he will immediately stop what he is doing and report developments for half an hour, well beyond the time you feel he should get back to his work.

The call is finished, and Julian is standing by the fireplace. Miles away. We start discussing the call. A couple of other friends and supporters are there too. Julian is still quiet but he is listening to us. The conversation dries up because the call to Mark has brought it all home.

There seemed to be other options, but they are all of straw. Julian dismisses each as it is suggested. He doesn’t want to look as if he has something to hide. The British police have said they want him and he is going in.

Sue and the other friends start discussing his statement. I get my camera set to film it for them and start working on the logistics. I don’t work for WikiLeaks, but I get drawn in. The police have given less time than expected and he cannot be late.

Julian sits on the sofa. Then he lies down. Then he sleeps. He’s been up for 48 hours. We don’t film any statement.

Then it is morning. He has to be at the police station at 9am, and Mark and the defence team need to see him at 7am. Sue and Jeremy are struggling to get Julian out of the building and trying to keep everyone’s spirits up by joking with him that he is never on time for anything.

We are all exhausted, and I can see that Sue is holding back tears as she bundles Julian into the car. Sue, Julian and I drive off but everyone expects us to be back by the evening.

We get to Mark’s home and it’s still dark. I notice a photographer getting his camera out of the boot of his car as we are about to park behind it, and we drive past. He deserved a picture for getting up that early on a cold morning to stake out Julian’s solicitor’s home, but he didn’t get it.

We meet Mark in a nearby greasy spoon and have breakfast in a back room. Julian is hungry, as he had no dinner last night. Mark gets straight into discussing the case and tells us that the police have changed the station that Julian is to report to.

Mark’s manner is grave but comforting and I can see that Julian and Sue are feeling the pressure. Sue goes out for another cigarette.

Jennifer joins us from Mark’s team and we drive to Kentish Town Police Station. Sue drives, Mark is on his mobile for most of the journey and we are all trying to be quiet. Julian is in the back, between Mark and Jennifer, on his computer, working on the statement.

I look at the familiar glow of the computer screen on Julian’s face, and after a while I notice the computer go to sleep. But Julian doesn’t switch it on again. He stares through it and I look away as I find myself feeling a surge of empathy for him. The statement is not finished as we arrive at the police station.

We drive through large blue gates and bland and besuited policemen and women are around the car. Mark and Julian get out and I try to observe while Sue struggles to park in the absurdly small parking space that she is directed to. I feel intimidated by the brutish ordinariness that this damned place exudes from every structure and person. I have visited police stations and prisons but never felt so uncomfortable before.

We are gathered behind Julian and Mark and a policeman reads out four Swedish charges, but I am not listening. Where I am standing, on one side, I can see Julian’s still face as he hears them. I admire his courage. He knows more clearly than anybody that he pressed the trigger long ago. Or, rather, the return key. The leaks are unstoppable whatever happens to him.

I ponder the disservice to Julian done by the media. With their stockings stuffed by WikiLeaks they dehumanise him with images printed and screened of a cold, calculating Machiavelli pulling strings from secret hideouts. The main hideout, of course, being the Frontline Club, where many of them have interviewed him.

They made him out to be the internet’s Bin Laden. The likeness might be poor, but that was OK because the colours were familiar and bright. Now the focus is on Julian’s court fight, instead of on the opaque political system that his leaks have exposed. The charges that Julian faces have already been dropped once, from a Swedish court that even Glenn Beck, the incendiary US Fox News TV host, rubbishes.

Julian is different to most of us. He is clever and obsessive but also funny and self-deprecating. But he has started something seismic but inevitable, a consequence of modern communications that cannot be stopped. One day we might be governed better as a result. Vengeance by the authorities is weakness here and will not help us face the challenges of the times.

I resolved then, and on that ugly spot, that I would never abandon Julian. It wasn’t any more about whether Wikileaks was right or wrong, for good or bad. It was about standing up to the bully and the question of whether our country, in these historic times really was the tolerant, independent and open place I had been brought up to believe it was and feel that it needs to be. If to fight for this country we will have to fight for its fundamental principles of justice then I declare my position in the ranks.

Vaughan Smith is the founder of the Frontline Club. He has personally stood surety for Julian Assange in court and provided his bail address. The names of Julian's supporters have been changed for their security

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'Operation Dark Heart' Author Sues for Uncensored Edition - New York Times

In September, the Defense Department spent $47,300 to purchase and destroy the entire first printing of “Operation Dark Heart” by Anthony A. Shaffer, asserting that it contained classified information.

The book was hastily reprinted with many passages blacked out and has become a best seller. But unredacted advance copies of the book, among a few dozen distributed by St. Martin’s Press before the Pentagon’s intervention, are still for sale on eBay for $1,995 to $4,995.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court here, recounts how Mr. Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, submitted his original manuscript to the Army to be checked for classified information and got official approval to publish it last January. But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in May and showed it to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, all three agencies asserted that the approved manuscript still contained secrets.

After a second review was completed, passages were removed from 250 of the book’s 320 pages.

The lawsuit claims that “little to none” of the information blacked out of the second printing is actually classified and that the censorship violated Mr. Shaffer’s First Amendment rights. “Many of the asserted redactions are objectively absurd,” the lawsuit says.

Mr. Shaffer’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, said that while his client agreed to allow publication of the hardback with the government’s redactions, “we reserved the right to come back and challenge the decision in court.”

A paperback edition is scheduled for publication next year, and Mr. Shaffer is asking the court to order the Pentagon not to require the redactions in the new edition and not to pursue civil or criminal penalties against him for releasing it.

A Defense Department spokesman, Col. Dave Lapan, said that by policy, he could not comment on pending litigation.

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Yahoo Cuts About 600 Jobs, Or 4% Of Work Force >YHOO - Wall Street Journal

(Updates with additional details and background)

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) said Tuesday it was cutting about 600 jobs, or about 4% of its work force, as the struggling Internet media company strives to increase revenue and boost margins.

Yahoo spokeswoman Kim Rubey said the cuts were largely aimed at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's products group, which builds advertising products, Web properties like the company's popular news, sports and finance pages, as well as its widely used email service.

Most of the jobs cut were in the U.S., she said.

"Today's personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy ...

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News: Japanese Publishers Cry Foul on Pirated App Store Books - The Mac Observer

Four publishers in Japan have accused Apple of selling pirated books in the company’s App Store for iOS apps. The Financial Times reported that the publishers have found instances of works covered by Japanese copyright for sell in pirated versions, usually in Chinese-language apps from developers based out of China.

For instance, when FT published its story, the complete works of Haruki Murakami (which includes works such as Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and other books) in Chinese for US$1.99. That app is no longer available.

The publishers said that Apple has pulled some instances of pirated works out of the App Store, but the group is complaining that Apple doesn’t have a formal mechanism to handle such issues so that pirated works can be dealt with more swiftly.

“Apple is yet to clearly specify a contact point for removal requests or the procedures for removal, and even for the content that has been removed, it is unclear who removed the content and how the determination for removal was made,” the group said in a formal letter of complaint. “In addition, despite directly profiting from this illegal distribution, Apple has also failed to disclose sales data for these digital bootlegs.”

The letter added, “Apple’s distribution of content that clearly infringes copyright constitutes the aiding and abetting of illegal acts, and this in itself must be deemed illegal.”

Apple offered FT a brief comment on the issue, saying in a statement, “As an IP holder ourselves, we understand the importance of protecting intellectual property and when we receive complaints we respond promptly and appropriately.”

The four publishers involved in the complaint are the JBPA, the Japan Magazine Publishers Association, the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan and the Digital Comic Association.

There are thousands of Chinese language apps available in the U.S. App Store, and many more in other App Stores throughout the world. Many of those are books in the form of an app, and Apple clearly hasn’t yet found a way to check IP rights on all the non-English apps that are submitted to the service,

The Japanese publishers have every right to be tense about their works being offered for sale illegally on the App Store, but it remains to be seen if Apple reverses years of secrecy and closed-door management of services and products such as the App Store by moving to more transparent business processes and policies like those in their letter.

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Holbrooke mentioned Afghan war before surgery - Washington Post

As friends and colleagues from four decades of diplomatic life reflected on the intensity of Richard C. Holbrooke's dedication, many were not surprised to learn that concerns about the Afghanistan war were apparently among his final thoughts.

After Holbrooke's death Monday, The Washington Post, citing his family members, reported that the veteran diplomat had told his physician just before surgery Friday to "stop this war."

But Tuesday, a fuller account of the tone and contents of his remarks emerged.

As physician Jehan El-Bayoumi was attending to Holbrooke in the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, she told him to relax and asked what she could do to comfort him, according to an aide who was present.

Holbrooke, who was in severe pain, said jokingly that it was hard to relax because he had to worry about the difficult situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

El-Bayoumi, an Egyptian American internist who is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's physician, replied that she would worry for him. Holbrooke responded by telling her to end the war, the aide said.

The aide said he could not be sure of Holbrooke's exact words. He emphasized Tuesday that the comment was made in painful banter, rather than as a serious exhortation about policy.

Holbrooke also spoke extensively about his family and friends as he awaited surgery by Farzad Najam, a thoracic surgeon of Pakistani descent.

Holbrooke's statement was seized upon quickly by critics of the Afghan war debate, some of whom interpreted it as a clarion call to end the conflict. Others viewed his comment as a last-breath disavowal of the Obama administration's war policy, which has involved a troop surge - which Holbrooke publicly supported - to combat the Taliban. But State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley cast Holbrooke's words simply as "humorous repartee."

Crowley said the comment "says two things about Richard Holbrooke in my mind. Number one, he always wanted to make sure he got the last word. And secondly, it just showed how he was singularly focused on pursuing and advancing the process and the policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan to bring them to a successful conclusion."

Holbrooke's deputy, Frank Ruggiero, has been named to fill his post as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in an acting capacity, Crowley said, adding that no significant move had been made to select a permanent replacement.

chandrasek@washpost.com deyoungk@washpost.com

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