Tuesday 22 March 2011

NATO, Gaddafi and Assange

"A man that the whole Western world wants to arrest and put behind bars for the rest of this life. And preferably, shot down its organization too. I am not really talking about  the NATO's  generated no-fly zone  over Mr. Gaddafi. This is another kind of NATO attack, and it is generated against a young man called Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks. That is the organization that America perhaps, and NATO,  fear more than Gaddafi himself. They are just terrified now about what WikiLeaks attack will come next".  Words of Prannoy Roi (NDTV 45 minutes exclusive interview with Julian Assange, broadcasted from New Delhi 22 March 2011)

Prologue
The NDTV interview Professors blogg transcribes here was addressed to a population of 1.18 billion people. Sweden has instead a total population of only nine millions. Here the small monopolist duck pond consisting of the mainstream Swedish press (only four main nation-wide newspapers), the televisions network controlled by the state (only three channels) and by corporate business (likewise), and the most part of the political-influence blogosphere, all of them can easily devote to a disinformation campaign about Assange and the accusations orchestrated against him. Not to mention the direct interventions of the Sweden’s Prime Minister and the head of the Swedish Legal-Court system. They are practically uncontested.

But although Sweden has a total population of only nine millions, 14.3 percent are foreign-born immigrants. If we add up their daughters and sons born in Sweden in the last twenty five years we might end in about twice that figure. This vast sector of opinions – that corresponds to a cohort of individuals well over the population of entirely Stockholm or trice the populations of Gothenburg or Malmo together - it is counted in Sweden more or less for nothing.


As a main part of the immigrant population is composed by political refugees from the Third world, these populations should be regarded to a highest degree as implicated in the Swedish Assange-affair. This, since the origin of the Swedish vendetta against Julian Assange is traced to the WikiLeaks cables disclosing events around the selling of private data from Sweden to NATO referred principally to the immigrant population (the secret agreements in Stockholm between Swedish government officials and representatives of the CIA and FBI, added to the pro-NATO surveillance law directly instigated upon the Swedish authorities by the USA).

This immigrant/political-refugee population is, according to some Swedish cultural-supremacist views, the only risk for terrorism. Therefore, it is NOT a surprise at all that nine out of ten Swedes approves the attacks of the NATO-dominated "UN" forces against Libya, and which ostensibly has primarily to do with the oil reserves. As little concern as demonstrated by the same Swedes on the "collateral damage" (massacre of civilian populations) in Iraq and Afghanistan - where Sweden has also troops under the lead of NATO - they seem to demonstrate in the case of Libya. Sixty-five percent of Swedes favour an immediately Swedish military intervention in Libya on behalf of the NATO-lead operations nominally under FN flag and directly ask  for JAS-fighters to be sent from Sweden to bomb Libya.


The Swedish government actually ponders in these very moments on such demands. And of course Sweden is using the tragic events in Libya for renew warnings on the issue of terrorism and to argue for a tightening in such anti-terrorist measurements. Psychological warfare updates: see for instance the social democratic newspaper Aftonbladet running the headline Gadaffi hates us (without quotation-marks, implying agression directed to the Swedes). Such appealings to  "personal agressions" against Swedes  were not heard since  Aftonbladet's headline "Assange attacks the Swedish legal security". Information-control increases, transparency vanishes, and political organizations that in the past have made a gold mine of these issues, such as the declining Pirate party, do not say a single word on the matter.

Aftonbladet 23 March 2011

Aftonbladet 8 Feb 2011
What these authorities fail so dangerously to understand, is that it is instead the lack of transparency, the absurd effort to hide the “other side’s” positions or its blunt distortion, the excessive tightening of the surveillance and control-laws, the ominous transgression of the human-rights and the integrity-rights of these populations that put the system in the prospective of self-destruction. Democratic-terrorist self-destruction, that is.

Sweden, unlike democratic India – as proven of this formidable interview of NDTV in which among other are discussed details of the WikiLeaks disclosures implicating directly the government and politicians – has never indulged in such important discussions on the actual WikiLeaks disclosures in reference to the Swedish authorities of the past and current governments. I refer here to the spying on Swedish citizens on behalf of NATO, the agreements of the past social democratic government with the CIA (see politicians at the notorious law-firm acting against Assange) on rendition to USA of political prisoners from Sweden, or to the political issues behind or around their accusation against Julian Assange. The citizens would not have the opportunity to obtain or submit their own opinion in the awareness of all facts and views. The lock is put on, completely, in fear of democratic disruption.

However, as I anticipated right here in these pages in “Sweden, the potential terrorist’s Paradise already in 2008 (about the surveillance-law requested by NATO-USA, as it now known thanks to WikiLeaks), this attitude may lead to exactly the opposite:

The debate has also questioned the state’s right and the state’s procedures, to in practical terms declare their citizens are not capable of having their opinion on sensitive political issues. It is just like an intellectual-based juridical interdiction decreed by the authority.

But the discussion should go beyond issues of psychological discomfort, for they are issues that also apply to essential human rights and aspects as defined in UN resolutions, European Convention, or the national Constitutions in several countries, including Sweden.

The scaring of people away and promote the practice of self-censorship, will result in the long run in people’s reluctance to examine and criticize any power in the future. In the absence of a  public observant attitude, the government and those in power will then become even more arrogant, and ready to intimidate a false obedience which will instead angry its citizens. This is the true potential terrorist paradise.

Do not move forwards in this control at the expense of the entire population’s dignity. For it has also become a symbol of a subordinate foreign policy. Do restore instead Swedish independent and strong neutrality!  /Prof. Marcello Ferrada-Noli, publisher of Professors blogg.


The NDTV Assange interview of 22 March 2011
Linked to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Prannoy Roi
New Delhi:  In an exclusive interview to NDTV's Prannoy Roy, Julian Assange talks about the WikiLeaks storm that has erupted in India. This is the transcript of the interview.

NDTV: You are under global attack...your home country Australia accuses you of treason...America wants to arrest you...in Sweden, you have been accused of rape. The West prides itself on the rule of law and its institutions of justice. Are you shocked by the ferocity and illegalities of the attacks on you?


Assange: I am disappointed that the US Administration has decided to betray the traditions of the founding fathers and those great traditions of Franklin and Madison.  Now the codified Bill of Rights within important protection for freedom is in the first amendment......... so that is disappointing. I would like to say that it is not shocking. We have been following the US military for 4-5 years now in this process of WikiLeaks and in other countries... but we can see that there is a burgeoning security state that has spread out not just for Washington because the centre of gravity is around there, but goes into all Western countries.  And there is a Western alliance that responds very aggressively.  And previous publications have received some of that response but it is really the size and the scale of the publication which has received and been stimulating such an aggressive attack.

NDTV: With this kind of a relentless attack.. where can you  live safely? Is there any country that is safe for you?

Assange: The question about the countries is interesting. In December last year, the Australian government  -  my home government -  stated that it had started a whole lot of investigation into us on behalf of the US government including (its) domestic intelligence agency and foreign intelligence agency, department of defence, the state federal police including the FBI.. and the CBI in the case of India. So that country does not seem to be a safe home for me and...similarly in one way, Sweden having a reputation built up in 1970s for neutrality will be a safe country.   But it is not true because of its proximity to Russia, and closer partnership with NATO...it is no longer possible. So there are perhaps other countries, perhaps Brazil or maybe even India, big enough countries to be able to stand up to the sort of the US interference, if they chose to do so. But right now it is not clear if there is any country that is safe for our publication. But we do have the will of the majority of people. My friends in Egypt and Tunisia say that these two countries perhaps would be the safest for us now because of the revolution of the governments that is bringing up... 


Here the Indian news report on the Assange NDTV interview
NDTV:  Many of us feel that you are a true new-world journalist, I mean you are fighting for freedom of information... but then you have got the US Vice President Joe Biden calling you a high-tech terrorist, the former Speaker  saying you should be treated as an enemy combatant. Now enemies in America, they are normally killed, that is their public statements. I just wonder what they say to you privately. Have you been threatened privately?

Assange: We do receive threats from time to time , there are many of them. But we do not take those threats too seriously... it is the people who are not making the threats and are concerned for us that are important. There is a bill going through the US Senate to clear us a transnational threat and therefore treat us in a legal sense the same way as Al-Qaida...hopefully we will work it through. The feeling in the United States is getting better...there are a number of academics and journalists in US that have come forward to announce those sort of moves. We just saw the State Department spokesperson Crowley resign over the treatment of Bradley Manning, one of our alleged sources. So it is not correct to say that US is of one voice to destroy us. There are still good people in US, still good people within the US administration, within the intelligence agencies, even in the Pentagon. And it is now bit of a fight between them to see that which way the US going to go.. is it going to be completely taken over by its security sector and throw all its good traditions out the window? Or are those reformists or we can even say the conservative forces that will want to conserve some of the good values of the United States, are they going to win? And that is why this is such an interesting period for us, and of course for everyone else, because after all the US is everyone's  superpower. And the US President is our President, my President and he is also India's President in the sense that the US is able to dispense its powers into many other countries. So which way it goes, that is very important. So it is quite an interesting time. It is possible that after the end of this process, we will actually see something better than what we had in the beginning. Yes, at the moment there is incredible overreach of power by the US administration. On the other hand, it is drawing a lot of attention to that power and abuse by the burgeoning security state in the US. And it may have struck too hard and as a result people will strike back...

NDTV: You mentioned that the US president is like the Super-President of us all. In the recent leaks about India, the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, the overriding feature is the extent of  America's efforts in influencing policies in India, so are you surprised at that or was it expected?

Assange: Looking at what the US has done with other countries, which we have revealed through these cables, it's not at all a surprise, it is their modus operandi. When I first started reading this material I thought my God everything those South American Marxists in the 1960s were complaining about in relation with the state department, it is actually true. it is not just that they are making a political rhetoric, actually it does appear that state department is actually an instrument of US industry of all particular types and it goes around the world clicking political intelligence, interfering in unions and all. We even saw this in Australia where the Australian Cabinet Minister from the Labour government was a confidential source for US Embassy, going there frequently.

NDTV:  There is of course an alternate point of view that what you revealed in these cables is a set of opinions and assessments made by some American diplomats in the US embassy. And you were just saying that 'my task ends there in revealing these secret cables' but there are other points of view that says that it leaves a lot of collateral damage where opinions and assessments by these officials are taken as facts to embarrass and weaken their states. And people ask you is that a fair thing to do, just leave this out and wash your hands off it?

Assange:  Absolutely not....it is not correct to say that all these cables are mere opinions by US diplomats...that is not true. These are official correspondence sent by Ambassadors, sent in their official capacity back to Washington. Their motivations are to improve their career prospects generally. So they want Washington to understand that they are engaged in the country. They are getting good sources of information and they are reporting back. This seems to be the predominant thing. But they report what they say are facts and they also present opinions........it is important to keep these two different. In the cases of these Indian cables which are causing such a furor about bribery...such an interesting case...it is very hard to understand why the US Embassy official would lie about that to Washington. What is more interesting is under what basis was he told that information? That the US Embassy official was shown that cash? Could it have been...because this was a US issue.. to demonstrate how compliant certain parts of Indian Parliament work with US interest?  Or could it have been to set up or frame another group. It is hard to see what benefit there would be in framing another group to Washington through that method. It is not clear what benefit it would be. But when we look at the cables in other contexts, they have been used and accepted as evidence in the Taylor case in Hague, they have been used in courts in Spain to reopen a rendition case involving the CIA. They have been used in a number of places, they have been accepted as quotes, as probative evidence, as genuine official documents. Of course what the officials say and how they gain their knowledge too must be investigated and interrogated.

NDTV: You seem to agree that the content of these tapes needs to be investigated. They may or may not be correct.

Assange: The comments I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh....these, to me, seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified ...absolutely false! Hillary Clinton in December last year spoke to the Indian government last year, perhaps to Prime Minister Singh directly or that level to forewarn that this material would be coming out. There is no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American Ambassador back to Washington and these should be seen in that context. That does not mean every fact in them is correct, you have to look at their sources and how they gave this information.

NDTV: Just to absolutely clarify -  The defence of the Indian govt is that a) authenticity of these cables cannot be verified. They may not be correct bits of evidence at all. B) Contents of cables are just views of people and could be factually wrong or at worst just gossip.  Are you absolutely confirming that the cables are genuine and that the government is wrong in saying that they cannot be verified?

  Photo Linda Nylind
Assange: That is absolutely correct. There is no doubt, whatsoever, that the cables are authentic. That is why we are being so heavily attacked by the Pentagon. That is why young intelligence officer Bradley Manning has been imprisoned in United States for 299 days now. There is absolutely no doubt. The content, of course, varies on a cable by cable basis. It is wrong to suggest that these are just opinions, these are official reports made by US Ambassadors, sometime it is opinion...sometimes not. It is done in a serious capacity. For example, if this cable on bribery is incorrect then the US Ambassador in India has a lot to answer for because he has been sending back very serious reports to Washington about senior politicians and behaviour in Indian Parliament, which casts it in a very negative light. It would affect the relationship between India and United States. So either he has committed a grave error that would damage Indian and American relations and should resign over that -  or the material was correct and he was reporting correctly and he had checked his facts before reporting back to Washington.

NDTV: We have actually heard from our senior former diplomats that all cables from India  - no matter what or whether from a junior -  go in the name of the Ambassador and all the cables from Washington to India go in the name of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obviously the Ambassador and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may not read every single cable, it just all goes in their name. This could have actually been just juniors in the Embassy and in Washington.

Assange: They don't tend to be too much more junior...it depends on the seriousness of the issue. You would probably find a political officer or an ambassador who usually clears it. By reading the content of the cable, you will see that Pauloff  - that's the political officer -  was told that. The content of the cable does not fabricate the Ambassador's name. For example, suppose when there is a meeting between the Embassy official or employee or political officer or Ambassador, they are named as that. What is written at the bottom of the cable going back is frequently the Ambassador or the political officer that wrote most of the material. But there is a reason for that. The Ambassador is made to read the cable and sign it off and send it out in his writing that he has approved.

NDTV:  What about America's reaction to WikiLeaks. The person who is said to have leaked those diplomatic cables-- Bradley Manning is in jail, and is being treated terribly, is being kept naked for hours... but the US media and society do not seem to be doing anything about it. Why do you think there have been no angry reactions to what has been happening?

Assange:  Bradley Manning is America's foremost political prisoner. The allegations against him, whether they are true or not, are of a political nature and he has been kept in solitary confinement for 299 days as a result of the political allegations that he has revealed - information like this for political reasons  - to demonstrate the inequities and abuses that were happening. There are people in the United States who are angry about this. The state department spokesperson resigned over this issue. However, it is not getting any big media play...it is bubbling there but is not being aggressively picked up and that is the nature of the mainstream press of the United States. It is a very destructive thing for all of us.
That is a fact about the United States and the security sector has grown so fast and so influential that its tendrils merge into most big companies and big media companies. That is the reality of the US economy and the US media. Unfortunately the US media is so strong, aggressive and has such sophisticated distribution mechanism that the bias then  pushed down in English language all over the world and to the other English speakers in the world, like the Australians, Indians, the Canadians and the British to somehow develop their own media infrastructure and to be able to resist the propaganda.

NDTV: The WikiLeaks cables on India have created a storm in Parliament. The response has been for the Opposition to accept it without question and the response of the government has been to live in denial. Two totally different responses. Is this normal behaviour to politicise your material?

Assange: In response to our publishing , the US government has taken certain steps, like to pressure banks to cut financial transactions to us. That is very revealing about the power connections between high finance and the US state department. Similarly, in the response to the cables alleging that that US state Embassy was shown cash boxes for bribing Parliamentarians, we saw something rather disturbing. We saw an immediate rush, not to deny that allegations in these facts were not true...we want to investigate properly to make sure everything is clear.. that we are innocent. Rather what we saw was an attempt to distort the record and fool the public about the nature of the material. First to say, they refused to comment at all, to suggest that the materials are not verified and that no other government accepted it. Absolutely false...that is actually the behaviour of guilty men. Man who is innocent doesn't tend to behave like that. That doesn't mean, people making those statements like Prime Minister Singh and so on are guilty of this particular crime, it suggests something that how Indian Parliamentarians and Indian politicians respond to very serious allegations. They respond through indirection, by lying and attempting to cover up the issue for the public rather than address it fully and frankly. The most serious issue in the cable, I suspect, is yet to be revealed. Just looking at what happened with other countries, that doesn't mean The Hindu is necessarily holding back what it thinks to be most important for Indians to last. In other countries they have dealt with ...you know an issue can catch fire, imagination of the public may not be the one you first think. There is quite a bit of time to get through the material...the material from Pakistan, from China.....it is likely to be interest to the Indian population.

NDTV: There is an impact of WikiLeaks and I know you are all fighting for freedom of thought and expression...if everybody from now is worried about their writings becoming public through WikLleaks, maybe they would be constrained and inhibited in their writings in case they are going to be leaked. So ironically the impact of WikiLeaks could be the end of free and fearless expression because everyone is terrified that it is going to be public...

Assange: It depends on what are you trying to express....should there be an end to frank and fearless expression of how to conduct a conspiracy which is against the public interest? Of course they should, we want to make it very hard for government officials to speak to each other in a frank and free way.

NDTV: So do you believe in the concept of official secrecy at all, or secrecy and privacy is for individuals only?

Assange: Well, privacy is for individuals, the governments try and use secrecy...sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes for a legitimate period of time... and most often, for illegitimate reasons. The big problem with secrecy is that how do you know that it is not being abused? So if somebody can just put a stamp on internal correspondence every time it's embarrassing because they are engaged in some sort of correspondence or abuse... then they can put a stamp 'secret' on it... no one can review to see whether that stamp is being correctly applied or not because in order to review it, you have to read the material. Of course it is a system that instantly escalates, the stamp starts getting on everything, confidentiality is extremely controlled...you end with a corrupt, inefficient and abusive organization. I say, of course there is time where secrecy is legitimate, but organizations and individuals must fight for it. They must really fight for it and prove it is illegitimate and there shouldn't be any false assumption that it is for only a legitimate amount of time...and after that time lapses and it ceases to be secret. That way the burden of truth is on those people who are trying to conceal things from the public. secretive

NDTV: So, would you at WikiLeaks ever publish private secrets of leaders' personal lives? Would you ever do that?

For saying in figures, the personal and political is all mixed up - who their friends are, who their relatives are is all factored in into their business and political decision- making. You can see, for example, in these cables, there is personal character, details revealed. Certainly, we think that there are many cases where personal information is not just personal, it enters into alliances and decision- making and who is someone's opponent or enemy. But as an organization, we have a very simple standard which is, we accept information of political, ethical, historical or diplomatic importance that is significant and has not been published before and is trying to be suppressed. We are not interested in people's love letters.

NDTV: How do you react to the many who accuse you of being secretive about yourself? Is that a conflict? How do you resolve that?

Assange: We are an organisation that is being harassed and attacked by a super power and of course, that requires certain defensive measures and has since 2008 at least where we had people affiliated with us being assassinated. So, that is not a matter of hypocrisy. It's a matter of a small organisation doing its best to continue carrying out its work and that includes defending us from state surveillance.

NDTV: Coming back to the cables in India, the previous set of cables, especially the ones on Afghanistan exposed the extent of Pakistan's role in terror against India. I am looking ahead at the new material that's about to come. Does it substantiate that role a little more? The Hindu newspaper has already done an excellent job in analysing all the stuff that has come out of WikiLeaks. Now, is there more big stuff to come?

Assange: There are some 6000 cables from the US embassies they have been tagged by the State Department about India. We have only just seen the first part of that now being published by our partner, The Hindu. I am sure that some of that material that we will see in the coming weeks will go into some of the Pakistani relationships. But, what we are really looking at more closely is the cables from Pakistan and those are something that are yet to be published. We are working to have those published and I am sure Indians and Pakistanis will be very interested to see what they reveal. Well, I wouldn't want to pre- judge them before they are published.

NDTV: Coming back to the impact of WikiLeaks, you have heard of widespread criticism that often loose conversations are released in WikiLeaks and some people are named who may be doing good work covertly or working underground, infiltrating and fighting against terrorism and once their names are public, their lives are in danger. What do you do about that?

Assange: This is something the Pentagon has tried to throw out every time it has been criticized by the Press, back to the 1950s. There is no allegation even by the Pentagon, even by the state department or by any American official that anything we have ever published in our entire history, has resulted to a single individual's personal or physical harm. Something that is repeatedly asserted without evidence can be dismissed without argument. We have a harm-minimisation process and clearly it has been 100% effective till date. While no organization is free from making mistakes when you deal with things of this scale and with this level of seriousness, today we have two perfect records: we have a perfect record of never having been fooled by information sent to us and we have a perfect record in having no one come to physical harm as a direct result of anything being published.

NDTV:
Your WikiLeaks have generally focused on the United States. Is Julian Assange anti-United States?

Assange: Not at all. We are an organization. Through our work, we aim to protect the Press and publishing... carrying on the tradition of Madison and Jefferson. We are actually upholding the founding values of the United States. We have published materials for over 120 different countries, exposed the assassination in Kenya to East Timor, billions of dollars of corruption in Africa. So we are not at all particularly focused on the United States. Rather, we have to publish our material in order of its significance, and simply cannot turn it away because it comes to United States. The reality of the United States now is that about 30-40 per cent of its economy, directly or indirectly, is bound up to the security sector. So it has a lot of secrets, a lot of computers and it has a lot of people within its state department, within the government, with the military. We are very unhappy about the way they are conducting themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan, that leads to those brave people stepping forward to give us material...we can try and do something about it.

NDTV: In the life of Julian Assange, do you have heroes?

Assange: Well, I think Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon paper whistleblower, he has become a friend over the past couple of years and can fairly described as a hero. There are others in different fields...it is better to say there are people who engage in heroic acts. Every individual is of course human, one must be careful with the hero label. Many people call me, for example, a hero but I am a man and a human being, just like all of us.






Other articles in Professors blogg on the Swedish case Assange case 

19 March 2011. Censorship of Assange-articles in the Guardian & Swedish press



Friday 18 March 2011

Censorship of Assange-articles in the Guardian & Swedish press

Is there a connection between the censorship of the same articles – and from the same blog – exercised in The Guardian and in the Swedish mainstream press?

[This post is supposed to be linked  to the following articles: SvD "Hurtig: Jag blir förbannad", "Ingen jävsinvändning från Hurtig", "Japan varnades för brister redan 2008", AB "Stängda dörrar ett måste för att fälla", "Det är ett straff i sig med utdragna rättsprocesser", DN "Assanges advokat avvaktar om jäv". Ping at Twingly was done 19/3 2011 and 06.01 and 12.52]

Foreword
The main issues - understandably occupying most minds and hearts  these days - are  those related to the events in Japan and particularly the emergent risks of a nuclear-related disaster. 

The fact is that WikiLeaks - the project founded by Julian Assange -  had warned about the risk of such nuclear-plant catastrophe in Japan associated with the event of an earthquake.

It is reported that in December 2008, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA had warned of such catastrophe identifying "a serious problem" with nuclear reactors "in areas of Japan prone to earthquakes”. The information was part of the US diplomatic cables releases by WikiLeaks. The cables also disclosed that one top IAEA nuclear safety official, Tomihiro Taniguchi, also a former manager of Japan nuclear energy security was a not adequate as to provide a safety management in case of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan as a result of earthquakes.

See more details on the above in the The Australian's report  Japan syndrome shows why we need WikiLeaks.

All of us that value in high esteem the contribution to peace and humankind that Julian Assange’s project has done - and that it may continue that outstanding while commanded by the civil courage of the project's first author -  also value as  banal, and anti-historic, the efforts of all those who with the help of fabricating pseudo-evidence, anti-personal media-campaigns and a variety of deceptions collaborate  at the end for the destruction of Assange’s project. 

All of those useful fools from the self appointed Swedish left, or self-designated as "true" liberals, or plain libertarian impostors, and who became collaborators out of sheer naivety or false patriotism, believing acting in the defence of “Swedish interests" and “cultural” values such as perfect Swedish police traditions, perfect Swedish juridical praxis and perfect “modern” legislation, are nothing but pathetic enemies of both culture, liberalism and true equality. Equality in front of justice, and legal proceedings, to start with.

Professors blogg have with the support of internationally recognized human-rights advocates - such as Naomi Wolf, also a leading spokesperson of one most important wave in modern feminism, and attorney and journalist Andrew Kreig, Director of the Washington-based Justice-Integrity project – worked to denounce such inequalities Sweden have displayed in their case against Assange. The police investigation, the irregularities in the prosecution in conjunction with the nominal accusers' “defence”, the intervention of foreign political and economic interests, the sinister link to social democratic politicians in the rendition of political prisoners to the CIA, their representation in  the law firm representing the "plaintiff" (the nominal Assange accusers), the vilifying role of the media in discrediting Julian Assange, etc., etc.

Professors blogg have authored half of total articles published so far in 2011 in the Swedish blogosphere on the subject "Assange", and 90 percent of all the articles in English.

The prize to offer has been severe. Professors blogg has been subject to blockade and hijacking. We do not mind that, personally. But our public have also forced to pay a ransom.

The ransom those in power will force us to pay in order to liberate our opinion from censorship is to be “honoured” with a self-inflicted injury to the integrity of such opinion. We should do like the most of Swedish bloggers, like the rest of collaborators. We should play along with the establishment’s war against Assange. And then we should write unmolested, and our opinions publicized in the wings of the mighty.

We shall not:

La lotta continua


The Guardian
Wikileaks Central reports on censorship exercised in The Guardian regarding links to Professors blogg. (see “Possible gag order on the Guardian re Assange case?).

Update 2011-07-04: See this updated report on the Guardian issue in "More Clues Point Towards Guardian Gag Order in Assange Case" (ccwlja)


The report of the Guardian repeatedly erasing of links to Professors blogg was first made in WL Central. Hereby I post the reply of the The Guardian forum-member which authored the report. She is answering here to my query for details.

[Here follows Debra's email of 4 March 18:41 - subject Re: Important info. needed]

Hello Marcello,

The problem was in linking to your website and also to even mention Professors Blogg website in the text of our comment. The moderators removed at least one comment where I didn't include any link, only mentioned the name of your site.

Another time in one of my comments I mentioned Naomi Wolf's "Karl Rove, Sweden and 8 major aberrations" article and I gave the URL to her article on your website and my whole comment was removed by the Guardian moderators. But at another time I mentioned this same article again - Naomi Wolf's "8 big problems" - but I gave a link to it on another website (Newsmill, I think - the article had a slightly different title on the other site and didn't mention Karl Rove in the title) and that was NOT removed.

I also left links to articles about Thomas Bodstrom and Andrew Kreig's "Karl Rove's Swedish Connections" article on your website - both times using the URL to YOUR blog - both times the whole comment (including links) was removed.

Those are the three authors I remember. 

Other Guardian readers have had exactly the same thing happen to them, but it is ALL mention of AND links to YOUR blog which are censored.

If it helps you, you can go to the Fuck Yeah Julian Assange blog because I have left detailed comments there about this whole censorship issue. If you read the days 24th, 25th, 26th February - all comments left by Debra (that is me, talking about the Guardian censorship issue) - there is more detail there.

I hope this helps.

Debra



[Debra asked me later per email 5 March 2011 09:29 "not to print my full name or email address"].
- Show quoted text -

Quoting Marcello Ferrada de Noli :
4 March 2011 15:21 - subject Important info. needed

Dear Debra,
I need to know however, which are the posts from Professors blogg that were refused to be linked or referred in The Guardian
These two questions are CRUCIAL for the publication:
1. Which posts (from *Professors blogg*) were blocked. You do not need to have the exact URL or remember the exact tittle. It would be enough if you remember the main-content or the author of the blog-post/s.

2. About the problem you got with these blogs in The Guardian comments. Was the problem referred to the *linking* of any of our blogs, or the problem was that The Guardian did not accept the mentioning of Progfessors blogg or the reference to a certain post in Professors blogg.

Please reply ASAP

Marcello
--
[Here follows excerpts of Debra's first email, 1 March 2011 11:15 - subject Guardian newspaper removing readers' links to your site]

Dear Professor Ferrada-Noli,

I hope you are well. Thank you for all the time and energy you devote to informing us about the Julian Assange case.

I recently asked the Guardian newspaper why they were systematically removing my comments that contained links to your blog. I got a reply! I have forwarded the original email I received below (please be careful with the names). I have tried to publicise this censorship and have managed to get the email published on WL Central. I hope this has helped direct more people to your excellent resource.

I understand the Guardian's actions as they are vulnerable to the UK's draconian libel laws; on the other hand I believe an informed public is vital to democracy.

Thank you for any help you can give.

Kind regards,

Debra XXXX
Username = Arbed or Arbed12

(PS. Guardian moderators are leaving my detailed analyses of the legal case
untouched, for which I'm grateful. I get a lot of positive feedback from other
readers for those.)

----- Forwarded message from xxxx@guardian.co.uk -----
   Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:12:25 +0000
   From: xxxx@guardian.co.uk
Reply-To: Blog.User.Help@guardian.co.uk
 Subject: Comment removal
     To: xxxx@onetel.com

Dear arbed,
We saw your comment asking why links to Prof Blog get removed by the moderators. All we're able to say is that certain external links potentially pose legal risk for the Guardian, and therefore have to be removed

Best

Community Moderation Team.

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

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visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/subscriber

 



As to the Swedish case, 

Uppdate. Preliminary conclusions contained in the reproduced article here below on the responsibilities of the opinion-censorship in the Swedish media apparatus were based in written information provided to us by Twingly. Twingly was specifically informed at the moment of our consultation that I was preparing an article in the issue to be published abroad. After my report was published in the Swedish Second-Opinion Twingly changed their version in 180 degrees and now affirms instead that it was not their clients, the  Swedish press, that exercised censorship to the Assange-articles in Professors blogg. First they say Twingly was not the responsible and implied the newspapers moderators. Now they say the newspapers were not at all the responsible. What has happened after our publication and why Källström is giving this totally new version only those actors know.

The newspapers from their part gave inconclusive versions. Svenska dagbladet informed per email that the problem was of “technical” nature and “beyond their control”, implying that it was caused by an external actor. Expressen (web-redaktionen) informed over the telephone that the responsibility of whether blogs appeared linked to their articles is clearly Twingly’s. But the journalist giving this information when I talked to Expressen's web-redaktionen 17 March, 17:28 (call loged from Italy), in spite of giving her name did not wish to be quoted.  Dagens Nyheter for their part plainly refused to comment. Twingly denied any wrongdoing.

AFTER we contacted Twingly the 11 of March and said that we were preparing a report on the Swedish media’s blog-censorship to be published abroad, Twingly finally linked Naomi Wolf’s guest-article in Professors blog to old articles (over a month ago) in the Swedish press. One of the censured articles – and that became the “pilot case” – was Naomi Wolf’s article in Professors blog the 10 of February 2011 dealing with the alleged Karl Rove’s connection in the Assange case and the wrong doings in the police investigation (“Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. By Naomi Wolf“).

In an essay of sheer deception, Twingly tries now to produce as “probe” that no censorship has been exercised against Wolf’s above article by showing screen shots that visualise such post is linked in the media article (see comment below by Martin Källström). What Källström hides is that they linked Naomi’s article only the 11 of March – after our announce on disclosing - and that they took the screen shots after that date.

The question on who has been behind this request of censorship in the Swedish media apparatus will remain surely unanswered from the part of the authors of such initiative, or from their collaborators.

The email-correspondence between Martin Källström, Twingly’s CEO, is published  down  below as an Appendix of this article. The readers will judge their selves. For my part, case closed.



Summary. This analysis is a follow up of a report in Second-Opinion (“Svensk media censurerar i Assange-fallet”, 2011-02-21) reviewing possible actors in the alleged censorship of the Swedish media apparatus towards opinion-articles. One conclusion here is that the link-search engines cannot be held responsible for the filtering [see update above]. Further, dissimilar levels regarding censorship are found among different newspapers. In Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet problems in the likings could have been in certain cases technically-based, while in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter those would be clearer ascribed to an active policy of selective censorship towards critical blog-opinions and analyses. [media 1,2,3,4,5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

In the context of analysing the Swedish Trial by Media against Assange I have previously reported the problems in the linking process (to Swedish mainstream-media articles) of some guest-columns and own analyses published in Professor blog.  Regarding the system used by Swedish newspapers in order to  display in their articles  links to blog-posts related to those issues, I reported in the above referred article an earlier commentary by Martin Källström, Twingly’s Chief Executive Officer, which manifested among other:

''The newspapers which are connected to Twingly get reports from their readers if the content of a blog is inadequate. When such report arrives in Twingly’s administration-gear, intervenes the “moderator” (newspaper’s Web-controller) and look into the blog’s content. . .” “You have a serious and good blog, I cannot think that some newspaper would blockade your article.''

I commented: "In the above phrase “some newspaper would blockade your article” Twingly
unequivocally admits that a Swedish newspaper would exercise censure against the publications whose content is deemed inappropriate. The question remains:  who authored the request for censuring BOTH Naomi Wolf’s and Andrew Kreig’s articles about Karl Rove, Assange and Sweden, published in the Swedish based Professors blog?"

In a letter of 11 March 2011 to the Company’s Executive Director Martin Källström, Professors blogg asked Twingly Sweden to kindly help us to elucidate these two items:

“A) Where in the linking process (Professors blogg - Twingly - Swedish newspaper) the referred censorship or filtering of the referred linked articles is exercised? B) What would be the reason for the said censorship?"

Twingly answered promptly and manifested that “the most probable cause is a technical issue, and if so it will be very easily resolved.” The Company added that “If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why and I'm sure they will publish the link after talking to you."

The fact is, as I reported previously in Second-Opinion, that I DID talk with the newspapers about this situation for over a month ago. Unfortunately, in one case (SvD) the message was inconclusive and in the other (DN), the consultation was plainly disregarded by the newspaper which did not answer at all.

The link-search engine
After Twingly investigated the technical issue in the base of a sample of links I provided, they concluded that their linking procedure it has been made correctly, according to their prevalent criteria in the “picking-up” of links from the blogosphere. Namely, the engines
surveillance all blogs and eventually detect those links corresponding to media-articles provided those media-links are located among the first fifty links included in a blog-post text.

This is the synthesis of the positive and negative outcomes of the test using as pilot case a blog-post I provided. In this particular post (the pilot case) I had recently added extra links corresponding to a list of new articles published on the same subject in Profesors blogg: I) Technical staff at Twingly examined first that blog-post and they  anticipated a  negative result in pinging, meaning that the pilot blog-post could not have been possibly detected by the search-engine because of a) the number of links in the post exceeded N= 50, and b) the media-links were placed in the text in a position below  the inserted link number 50, which it is the cut off in the  engine's surveillance  for each blog. II) Then I moved higher up in the text of that same blog-post (the experiment pilot-post) the links corresponding to several related media-articles, in order to allow them to  be detected before  all the other links. III) Finally, using that modified blog-post Twinlgy performed the Ping procedure and this time the pilot blog-post was linked almost instantaneously. I checked from my site the first of those links in the pilot blog-post and confirmed that the ping process functioned.

The above procedure would indicate that, according to an standard technical procedure, Twingly would have performed the linking from the blog towards the newspapers’ articles in every case in which the media-articles links were correctly placed (before N= 50). This then would rule out that the problem would have been occasioned by a failure of Twingly’s technical procedure specifically in regard to my pinging.

Although Professors blogg have never signalled Twingly as "THE responsible" for these non-linking episodes, I had mentioned Twingly as one of the actors operating in the linking system with reference to the articles in PB. Those assumptions regarding the linking system in the media apparatus have to be reconsidered.
 
[see update above].

In concrete, my conclusion is that Twingly has to be ruled out as a possible actor – within the media apparatus – in the filtering or censorship of Swedish blog-articles
[see update above].

Which leave us with the rest of the actors.

The owners
There are no conclusive studies on Corporate censorship in Sweden, although the consolidation of ownership in Sweden’s main newspapers reduces the number of owners basically to two: Bonnier (principally) and Schibsted. The newspapers usually linked by Swedish blogs are Dagens Nyheter (owned by Bonnier), Svenska Dagbladet (owned 99,4% by Schibsted), Aftonbladet (owned 49,9% by Schibsted, and then LO), and Expressen (owned by Bonnier).

As I have already stated in
article on the case Assange I published in Newsmill, I would not believe that there would be such determinant censorship existing in Sweden as exercised from the owners of the newspapers towards the editors or newspapers staff. This should include the on-line editions. Ergo, this actor is also ruled out.

The Swedish newspapers
With the help of Twingly’s “rules of the game” criteria which they provided me I tested anew the linking processes departing from Professors blogg’s articles on the Assange case.

Twingly has given guarantees that – provided the links to the media articles is localized in the blog-text within the range of the first 50 included links, the article would be picked up by Twingly and definitely be sent to the newspapers so they could placed in their blog-list linking to their respective article.

As referred above, the test I performed 11 March, still in contact with Twingly, resulted in that I finally could confirm that the "pilot blog-article", as we saw almost immediately, had became visibly as linked in the newest article of SvD regarding the Assange-theme. I had also linked the pilot post at the same time to an article in DN. Testing over and everything looked all right. I thanked Twingly.

However, as I saw it few hours later, the same article did not appear linked to the article of Dagens Nyheter. Astonishingly, Dagens Nyheter instead ran a message at the bottom of the DN article stating: “This article has no blog-posts” [Artikeln saknar blogg-poster].

Further, the “test-article” from Professors blog also had disappeared from the new SvD article - as we saw instants after doing the linking test med Twyling - although it remained (still until now, a day after) in the SvD’s older articles.

In the context of the present analysis, it is highly relevant to corroborate here that the very same article (“
Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. Guest-article by Naomi Wolf”) that 11 March with the assistance of Twingly staff it became finally linked (to some of the articles it was meant to), had not been accepted by the newspapers during the originally linking-process I performed manually on the 10 February 2011.

And this, particularly considering the fact that the article of Naomi Wolf in its original edited version in Professors blogg contained only 28 links all together (including n= 11 “labels”) prior the given media-links, ergo absolutely within the N= 50 consecutive-links range determined by Twingly.

As source for the above I have the two edited versions of that guest-column of Naomi Wolf as confirmed to me per email by Blogger 2/10/2011 12:30:00 AM respectively 2/10/2011 02:56:00 PM (with the links to the newspaper-articles included).

All which reinforce the panorama on that is not Twingly, but the Swedish main newspapers which have in the past exercised this arbitrary filtering.

In the same fashion, there are other articles from Professors blogg, which, in spite of falling within the above described “50-links limit” neither have been linked in requested media articles. One example is my analysis “
Does Sweden Inflict Trial by Media against Assange?” of 20 February 2011. The article has a total of 36 links in the text preceding the media-links which appear at the end of the article. The blog-link was filtered by most of the articles in the Swedish mainstream media in spite of the direct relevancy of the subject treated in conjunction to such articles.



Yet another example of link-censorship situations, in which the  blog-posts was not linked at all by the Swedish mainstream press on spite it treated the very same subject as in the newspaper article, is the Professors blogg’ analysis "Comments on Judge Riddle's verdict & and lawyer Jennifer Robinson’s interview" (27 Feb 2011). I essayed to link this post to the article in SvD “Hurtig: Jag blir förbannad” of 24 Feb 2011. At the time of the linking the article in PB had only n= 33 links (or N= 44 in case n= 11 labels are also counted as “links” in the process. Further 3 links were added 7 March). In other words, all within the range of the 50 links operated by the Twingly system. The article was not linked, as seen in the list of blogs appearing at the end of the SvD article.

The pictures below correspond to the blogs listed (two pages) in the Article "Hurtig: Jag blir förbannad" as it was seen 12 March 2011. Professors blogg's post Comments on Judge Riddle's verdict & and lawyer Jennifer Robinson’s interview is NOT included in the list


Finally:
I have encountered the following situation regarding the newspaper Expressen.

Just beside the article at Expressen 10 March 2011 "
Polisen vän med kvinna som anmälde Assange", the newspaper run a markedly visible box stating “Do blog about this article. Comment and link this article to your blog. Then your article it will be seen here”. [”Blogga om den här artikeln. Kommentera och länka till den här artikeln i din blogg. Då kommer ditt inlägg att synas här”] and they give also there instructions as how to link Pinga din blogg hos Twingly så hittar vi den.- However, as seen in this picture taken 12 March 2011, Expressen conceals the phrase “Show the most linked / most recent blog-article“ with the trick of using white fonts against a white background (so the text listing the eventual blogs cannot possibly be visualized, for the background has the same white colour!).


Of course there were many posts in the blogosphere following that Expressen’s article. As listed in Knuff.se that day several bloggers  even characterized the referred Expressen's article as a pseudo-scoop [see update above].

Further, dissimilar levels regarding the discussed censorship are to be found among different newspapers. In the case of Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet problems in the likings from our blog could have been in certain cases technically-based, while the case of the main Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter it would be clearer ascribed to an active policy of selective censorship towards critical blog-opinions. Finally, the situation reported here about newspaper Expressen has to be investigated further, as a technical problem could explain the absence of the above mentioned blog-listing. [see update above]. The denouncing of all cases regarding Swedish media which essay selectively blog-linking with regard to the covering  of the Swedish case against Assange, should be strongly continued until such censorship praxis it brings to an end.

Conclusion: A selective censorship from sectors of the mainstream press has been exercised  against blog-opinions and fact-based analyses contradicting articles by that media, in connection to the case Assange as reported in Professors blogg. Who has authored this censorship initiative or been able to implemented is unclear, as actors in the Swedish media apparatus blame each other.

The arrogance displayed by some actors in the Swedish media in their pursuit of censorship, to hide, minimize or distort the truth on the irregularities in the Swedish case against Assange and Wikileaks – including those committed by the Swedish media themselves – contrast with the humble yet effective dedication of thousands independent analysts, nonetheless professional, unbound and liberate, gathered in the world forums and blogospheres.

Sweden complains these days about prestige losses abroad, but Swedes should start by protesting and demand a fair media report on this and all issues affecting the Nation. Also a significant part of the budget allowing these media to indulge in such discussible ethical adventures, are in fact public funds. The public should own the truth. Those in power should own the shame.

Marcello Ferrada-Noli




Email correspondence between Twingly's CEO Martin Hellström and M Ferrada-Noli 11 - 15, 2011 
(some of this correspondence was also published as commentaries in Second-Opinion).


Den 15 Mars 2011 08:46:588
After my comment to Martin Källström here bellow, I received an answer from him per email; he did not send it here as a public comment at difference with his first reply. In such email, Källström does a 180-degrees turn with reference to his previous statements to us on the possible role of the newspapers – Twingly’s clients - with regard to my alleged complains of link-censorship. As he has not made this communication public, neither I can reproduced here as a whole. I will thou publish it in Professors blog together with all the correspondence with H, provided he agrees.

I state in the meantime the following:

1. I have NEVER received an information from Källström prior to the publication of this article in Second-Opinion 14 March 20011, on that “none of your posts have ever been removed by newspaper moderators. I just want to be clear that this is the information you have received from us.” (Källström email 14 March, 11:17:51)

2. Quite at the contrary, Källström did expressly write to us “If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why. . .” (Källström email of 11 March, 11:17).

I have in no possible fashion misrepresented in my article what Källström has himself said in his email communications. I have quoted him exactly as he wrote and I have not given my conclusions as his opinions. I even wrote before my signature “THE OPINIONS HERE ARE EXCLUSIVELY MINE".

In the main, the issue was about a complain concerning link-censorship, as illustrated among other with the filtering 10 February 2011 (please observe, 10 February) of Naomi Wolf’s article in Professors blogg “Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case”. At the date of that original ping, effectuated in several occasions on the 10 February, the article fully complied with the Twingly rules. But it was not linked. Earlier, Källström said to us it was not Twingly that blocked posts that complied with the rules. Now he says it was not the newspapers. Who was then if not Twingly or the newspapers?

Finally, Wolf’s article visualized in the screenshots referred now by Källström in his first commentary here (http://i.imgur.com/OHlJD.png) corresponds to the ping done by Twingly only three days ago, the 11 of March, long AFTER the public complain we made, and in conjunction with our consultation to Källström 11 March 2011. We are of course pleased that the article is finally linked to the media even if it was published in Professors blogg for over 30 days ago (as shown in the list), and referred to old articles published by that time.

Marcello Ferrada-Noli, 14 March 2011

Reply |Marcello Ferrada-Noli to Martin Källström, 15 March, 10:01

Martin, your email of 14 March 2011, 17.51 is preposterous:

1.      About “none of your posts have ever been removed by newspaper moderators. I just want to be clear that this is the information you have received from us.”

This is a plain fabrication. You have NEVER affirmed to us, before this email, that the newspapers’ moderators have never removed our posts. At the contrary, what you have said instead is “If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why. . .” (Källström email of 11 March 2011, 11:17).

2.      About “If any such moderation would have taken place, we would see it in our database logs, since no moderation can be done if not through our system.” This is absolutely the FIRST time you are mentioned this. Quite at the contrary, you NEVER ruled out the possibility that the moderators would have to stop the links to our posts (see for instance item 1, above).

3.      About “Feel free to continue to misrepresent this information”. What information are you talking about? The information you DID NOT give to us? Or the one you gave but now you pretend to deny? How dare you Martin Källström to produce such statements while everything I have quote from you it was written by yourself in black and white?

I would like ask you here for your agreement to publish in Professors blogg the complete correspondence between Twingly and us.  As the reader will be able to see in the email exchange, there is no such information to either interpret or misrepresent, as you wrongly, and unmerited, accuse.

Finally:

“Misrepresentation” is defined as “a fraudulent representation with the purpose to deceive”. Those are a very serious accusation which, by having whatsoever no ground, would make you fully liable. For is a behaviour that I will not accept, at all. I have quoted you exactly as you have written. I never in my article mentioned my opinions as been yours. What I said instead, and pristine clear before my signature was: THE OPINIONS HERE ARE EXCLUSIVELY MINE”

Sincerely

Marcello Ferrada-Noli
 


Reply |Martin Källström to Macello Ferrada de Noli, 14 March, 17:51
[this email was not sent by Källström to Second opinion, only to my private email address]

14 March
Dear Marcello.
Thank you for this. What I'm trying to get across to you is that none of your posts have ever been removed by newspaper moderators. I just want to be clear that this is the information you have received from us. If any such moderation would have taken place, we would see it in our database logs, since no moderation can be done if not through our system. Feel free to continue to misrepresent this information, but if you do please take note that in doing so you are expressing the belief that you have received false information from me. If so, I certainly will respect your belief and your freedom to express it, but I feel very sorry that you do not have more confidence in me..

Best regards, 
 Martin

Marcello Ferrada-Noli

Dear Martin,

1. On the "one blog at the time rule". I thank you for that information. I had perhaps figure it out of my own, if not were for the fact that I have seen from time to time in the articles' blog-lists two blog-posts from the same blogger, from different dates.

2. I also tried to make clear that not all my articles have been neglected in the linking process. Only those in the group Assange-subject, and in this group those that specifically treated, mentioned or linked to articles on the alleged Rove connection to such case in Sweden. You can see a possible rationale for this in my previous article in Second-Opinion on this matter, as there are some journalists apparently well situated in the corridors of power, and self declared Rove fans, which have openly advocated for the action to stop Naomi's article from circulation in the blogosphere. I can also tell you that in a later occasion I have tested to send the same material from my other registered blog. The first time it went through, but refused afterwards.

3. About Noemi Wolf’s guest-column 10 Feb 2011. Karl Rove, Sweden, and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case. Guest-article by Naomi Wolf (the first one); it did comply with the Twingly norms (the 50-links limit) the first time I tried to link it. The ping functioned but the article was not linked at the newspaper level. I believe I explain that clearly in my recent article.

I greatly appreciate your help in all this, and from your staff, and judging from the recent developments, I have the impression that this filtering episodes will not occur that easy in the future.
Kind regards

Marcello

Den 14 Mars 2011 16:07:23
Martin Källström
Hello Marcello,

Thank you for inviting me to comment on this post. In spite of my efforts to be as thourough as possible in describing how Twingly works, I'm truly sorry that I failed to provide enough information. I wish you had included your concerns above in the information you provided to me, in which case I could have addressed them properly before.

Twingly would not work at all without a few limitations. One of the limitations is that any specific blog only can contribute a single blog post to each article. This limitation is in place because otherwise Twingly backlinks would be far too inviting for spammers, and one blog could simply link dozens of blog posts to the same article to mechanically dominate the debate there.

If you look at these screenshots from some of the articles that you have linked to in your blog: http://i.imgur.com/OHlJD.png , you can see that your posts certainly are not banned from the newspapers. However, you can notice that your blog only appears once on each article. In the cases where you have linked more than once to the same article, only the latest blog post is linked from that specific article.

If you or any of your readers have similar concerns in the future (no matter how small!), I would like to encourage you to get in touch with us at support@twingly.com so that we can sort out what is going on.
Best regards,

Martin Källström
CEO Twingly


Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 14 March, 14:57

Hi,

I would like to have your comments (off the record if you like) on these two texts. I have mentioned you both in Acknowledgements.
Please observe that two erratas (seen in "Kommentarer" section), are waiting to be corrected in the Second-Opinion text.

1) http://www.second-opinion.se/so/view/1762
2) http://ferrada-noli.blogspot.com/2011/03/opinion-censorship-in-swedish-media.htmll

Kinds regards

Marcello


Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 15:56

OK, thanks
Marcello

Martin Hellström to Marcello Ferrada de Noli 11 March, 15:41

Hi Marcello,
It seems to be working out so far, but please don't hesitate to let us know if you have more questions.
Just note that we don't have support during weekends, so Kristoffer won't be able to reply between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.

Best regards,
Martin

Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March,  15:41

Dear all,

Now the linking procedure is functioning and Naomi's article is linked accordingly.

I thank Martin, Kristoffer and the Twingly support-staff for this valuable clarification. I feel of course relieved and I will author a corresponding explanation in Professors blogg.

Although this, unfortunately, does not change my analysis on the Mainstream Media article-production in the Assange case (both in the issues of objective-content and characterization ad-hominem) my assumptions regarding the linking system in the media apparatus have to be reconsidered.

I  also like to mention that in no instance during this process I have signaled Twingly as "the responsible" for this  non-linking episodes.

With best regards

Prof. Marcello Ferrada-Noli

Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 11:33
Dear Martin,


Martin Hellström to Marcello Ferrada de Noli 11 March, 11:17
Hello Marcello,

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The most probable cause is a technical issue, and if so it will be very easily resolved.

If it is a technical issue, then it is Twingly's fault and responsibility that your blog posts have not appeared. If this is the case I deeply apologize beforehand and promise that we will resolve it as quickly as possible.


If it is not a technical issue, then it is the moderators at the newspapers themselves that have made the decision to not link to your blog posts. If so they will be able to give the exact reason why and I'm sure they will publish the link after talking to you.


But since you have provided the sample links which is all the information we need to investigate the cause, let's do that. Please be patient and wait for us to look into it. Rest assure that we will resolve this in a timely fashion.


Best regards,
Martin Källström

Marcello Ferrada de Noli to Martin Källström 11 March, 10:31 

To
Martin Källström, Twingly CEO


Dear Mr. Martin Källström,

I wonder whether you would help me to understand the situation I have with linking of my blog-articles (I publish the Swedish-based Professors blogg ) to main Swedish newspapers using Twingly system.

1. I run the said blog since 2005. I started to link to articles in the Swedish media from early and I have even advocated in this article on Twingly for the use of this unique service. Prior the covering in my blog of the case Assange I had never before experienced any problem with the linking from Professors blogg's articles to articles published in the Swedish mainstream media.

2. However, the linking from several articles published in my blog during the last weeks, either authored by myself or by prominent American attorneys or human-rights journalists as Andrew Kreig and Naomi Wolf, have been denied.

These are authors of notable intellectual prestige and with very many texts published in books or column form. As an example, both of them have a column in The Huffington Post, the leading  journalist publication in the USA.

I mention the above in making a point that they are authors/journalists with recognized experience in editing and publishing articles, books and columns as to accordingly provide their published analyses, sources, etc. with utter professionalism.

3. What I need now is to establish the these two items:

A) Where in the linking process (Professors blogg - Twingly - Swedish newspaper) the referred censorship or filtering of the referred linked articles is exercised.
B) What would be the reason for the said censorship

The most recent among these articles (with denied linking) is  WikiLeaks aftermath. The Middle East Feminist Revolution, by Naomi Wolf . The media links essayed were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, (corresponding to DN, SvD, Expressen and Aftonbladet).

I would greatly appreciate for an ASAP reply by you in this matter, as I am urged by a USA human-rights publication to report on this episode.

With best regards

Prof. Marcello Ferrada-Noli




Other articles in Professors blogg on the Swedish case Assange case

  7 Dec 2010. Analysis: Why Sweden revenge against Assange