Yes it IS a big difference if the names were ALREADY known to the government or if they weren`t. Looks like the cables were used as a propaganda tool to justify+sell the actions towards the opposition ABROAD. INSIDE Belarus u can bet that the sceret police does NOT need cables to tell them who the leaders of PUBLICLY demonstrating opposition leaders are or that they wouldn`t be able to convict them on trumped up charges with (forged) evidence without them! Looks like u have no idea how a dictatorship or a police state works...

Assange has been designated a hero of the people (tm) by the likes of John Pilger.

Hence anyone who criticises him is a neocon liar.

"Reworded a little and this could be the good ol' USA."

No it couldn't.

This disgusting smear piece is filled with many factual inaccuracies and is just a re-hash of Komireddi's October 2011 article that was published in the neo-con Israeli magazine "Tablet". Why did The New Statesman re-publish this shoddy article?

Komireddi throws around a lot of accusations, but never offers any evidence to substantiate his claims.

For example:

1. "Israel Shamir, a WikiLeaks associate and an intimate friend of Julian Assange -- so close, in fact, that he outed the Swedish women who claim to be victims of rape and sexual assault by Assange"

FALSE! The women's identities were revealed by Sweden's Flashback forum. Also, how on earth does writing a blogpost on Assange prove an "intimate" relationship between Shamir and Assange?!

2. Israel Shamir "allegedly travelled to Belarus" and "reportedly met Lukashenko's chief of staff".

Says who? Please present evidence to substantiate these claims.

3. "James Ball, a former WikiLeaks staffer, revealed that not only did Assange authorise Shamir's access to the cables..."

James Ball, whose Twitter account is full of anti-Assange hate and who now works at the Guardian (the newspaper responsible for the WikiLeaks password security breach), is hardly a reputable source of information about Assange. Here is Israel Shamir's response to James Ball's allegations: http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Ball.htm

4. Assange is "also now employed by Russia Today, the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin"

FALSE! Assange is *independently* creating a made-for-TV series of political interviews and RT merely bought a licence to broadcast the show. How does this make him an "employee"?? If ABC Australia buys a licence to broadcast David Attenborough's nature shows, does that make David Attenborough an "employee" of ABC Australia?!

5. Assange "told the Guardian's David Leigh about Afghans who cooperated with the United States against the Taliban,"[I]f they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."

Assange has repeatedly denied this claim. Also, two reporters from DER SPIEGEL magazine who were at the same meeting dispute Leigh's claim. Leigh is the one who breached WikiLeaks security by publishing the Cablegate password in his tell-all book (which he has sold the film rights to Hollywood). Astonishingly, Leigh denies that it's his fault and pleads ignorance. His credibility on any matter concerning Assange is dubious.

Mr Komireddi, please fact-check before writing things which can be easily debunked by your readers.

Caveat lector. This article contains numerous falsehoods. All readers ought to be aware that, in order to have any confidence about the allegations here expressed, they need to do some independent reading of their own. I will flag some of the more egregious deceptions here.

There is no evidence that Shamir is an "intimate friend" of Julian Assange. The only evidence that has been presented is the mere *claim* that he may have invoiced WikiLeaks for services rendered in cable analysis, while meeting Assange *once* in December 2010. That such an invoice existed is entirely reliant on the assertions of Guardian employee James Ball, an associate of David Leigh who departed from WikiLeaks on unfriendly terms. This is all independently verifiable.

There has never existed the allegation that he is an "intimate friend" of Assange: not in any of the previous hitpieces on this topic. Readers should be aware that this is an entirely novel exaggeration.

Israel Shamir did not out the Swedish complainants. The names of these women were given out on Sweden's Flashback forum shortly after the controversy exploded. This is all independently verifiable.

There are only allegations that Shamir acted as an informant against the Belarusian opposition. This needs to be substantiated. Even if it could be substantiated, it would not be fair to defame Julian Assange on this basis. To date, the British press has been happy to proceed on the basis of rumour to satisfy its animosity towards WikiLeaks.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Shamir acts in every respect with Assange's blessing. The most defensible assumption is that if Shamir acts wrongly he acts alone. Further evidence would have to be presented to substantiate the claim that Assange bears any malice towards the Belarusian opposition. By the logic on display here, if Assange had a lapse of judgment with Shamir, he also had a lapse of judgment with The Guardian, which disclosed - in breach of contract - all of the cables to Ha'aretz's Yossi Melman, now exposed in Stratfor emails as Mossad's contact at Ha'aretz.

The British press continues to deploy thought-terminating cliches as to Shamir's alleged anti-semitism. Inconveniently, though certainly an exponent of unseemly and provocative views, Shamir does not match the typical profile of an anti-semite, nor a holocaust denier. He is at worst a "self-hating jew," (to use another thought terminating cliche) and a holocaust revisionist. Attention ought to be paid precisely to the views Shamir actually holds, before going off the handle, as all British journalists who report on this story in fact have done.

The Ian Hislop incident is as deceptively related here as it was then, absent any context. Anyone familiar with it will know that Komireddi has selected from the full array of facts on it quite deviously, in support of his hitpiece.

Assange made no "subsequent efforts to distance himself from Shamir." He simply didn't comment on the matter.

How did Assange stop others from criticizing Shamir? Where is the evidence or the testimony for this, beyond unsubstantiated gossip published in the New Statesman without attribution?

David Leigh has been maliciously spreading the rumour that Assange made the above quoted statement on the Taliban informants. Leigh has been roundly discredited in a challenge to this story by Kristinn Hraffnson in a debate in Norway at which he was present, a fact conveniently ignored by UK journalists engaged in open vendetta against WikiLeaks.

That Julian Assange has enemies at the Guardian is dismissed here as if it was implausible. Assange does have enemies at the Guardian. There is now a long historical record of concerted attempts by specific Guardian staff to discredit Assange, including, perhaps most seriously, out-and-out falsehoods pertaining to the unredacted release of cables last Autumn. This is well attested for anyone who cares to look. I urge all readers to investigate this matter for themselves, and not to rely on the mendacity on evidence in the New Statesman.

The final paragraph neatly distinguishes the "good" Belarussians (ie those who act as convenient support for this transparent attack on WikiLeaks) from the "bad" Belarussians (ie those who may actually feel as if WikiLeaks was a good thing for Belarussians), before bringing the rhetorical jury in on Assange. The Belarussians behind the film are familiar with the pack of lies on display here, but that they would say so is here presented as some kind of absurdity. The absurdity is closer to home.

Once again, I urge readers to independently verify all factual claims in this article before considering them proven. The British press is now exceedingly hostile to WikiLeaks continued existence, and cannot be trusted.

To Mr Danger,
I use caps to emphasize something. Isn`t that obvious?

PS: How do I know how a dictatorship works? Not from personal experience (thank God) but from studies and an interest in history.

BTW only someone who ran out of arguments has to find refuge in personal attacks. Its a pitty u can`t do without them.

Kapil Komireddi's comment responding to Sarah - though phrased quite aggressively - demonstrates how little Komireddi actually has against Assange.

We are to gather that Assange's fault is that he hasn't been sufficiently contrite for a *perceived* error of judgment in relation to *hitherto unsubstantiated* allegations against somebody else. He hasn't, in other words, appeased hostile journalists holding him to an unreasonably and selectively high standard of moral conduct.

The worst he can be accused of is that he refused to say and do what poisonous little hacks like Komireddi tried to force him to do by bilgepumping misinformation into the British public consciousness.

Assange's success as a journalist so clearly implies the shame of Britain's territorial little press sector that it has become necessary to destroy him, an operation already well underway, and likely to reap melancholy rewards for a long time into the future.

To Melbourneninja
"2. Israel Shamir "allegedly travelled to Belarus" and "reportedly met Lukashenko's chief of staff"."
Well, I travelled to Belarus and I met with Lukashenko's people and with opposition - as an international observer at the elections.
Nothing to be ashamed of :-)

A word to the wise:

Israel Shamir calls Spanish Holocaust denier a “wonderful man”

http://jhate.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/israel-shamir-calls-spanish-holoca...

A stunning and stunningly crude smear-job, the whole ridiculous edifice erected on an allegation.... How on earth did this nonsense get through the editorial process.

@x7o

There's plenty of evidence that Assange has/had a close relationship with Shamir. Here's a useful summary:-

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10275/

As for Shamir's anti-semitism, here's a sample of his writing:-

"David Irving was sentenced for denial of Jewish superiority. His doom seals the reign of (albeit limited) freedom that began with the fall of Bastille. European history went full circle: from rejecting the rule of Church and embracing free thought, to the new Jewish mind-control on a world scale. Not only is Western Christian civilisation dead, but even its successor, secular European civilisation, has met its demise only a few days after its proud and last celebration by the Danish scribes. It was short-lived: about two hundred years from beginning to the end, the Europeans may once have had the illusion that they can live without an ideological supremacy. Now this illusion is over; and the Jews came in the stead of the old and tired See of St Peter to rule over the minds and souls of Europeans."

Shamir's antisemitism is rank and pervasive. Assange either can't see it or isn't bothered by it.

That was funny. Especially when the offer connected Stalin with Internet monitoring, etc. Also truncheons which blooded the streets... :) if you check YouTube records, you will see that "occupy" fights where much more violent and there where much more people. The offer is trying to present these truncheons like a new Tahrir squire :) it was not at all. The author is not honest... To trash...

I am not intimate on the Assange debate and I reject the accusation of anti-semitism for his supposed affiliate Israel Shamir. X7O makes Shamir's position on the holocaust religion clear enough.

However, I do appreciate Shamir's point about Belarus not selling out national assets to the foreign asset grabbers and thus surviving the transition better than any ex-Soviet republic with a result of less mortality and less unemployment. Obviously nations that did sell out and continue to do so in so many other transition situations have high mortality and unemployment, not to speak of extreme poverty and total exclusion of a major part of their population.

The same argument goes for countries selling out (or buying into) NATO. They will sit on the blisters after having stolen the last tax pennies out of their citizens to buy the ugly tools that NATO members like to play with on foreign soils.

While I do not know a bit about Belarus' political system, except for your reporting, I seem to understand that there is a correlation between supposed democracy and selling out of public and private assets to foreigners and, equally, between supposed non-democratic rule and maintaining control of the assets in the interest of the people.

But let's not blame the countries who did sell out big way in the past, while they were under CIA patronage. Among them are now former sell out countries like Brasilia, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia (excuse me for not mentioning quite few others, I am not familiar with the Africa scene) who are rowing against the stream and use their resources to provide for their own people. One can argue here that they gained these public resources by selling out in the first place. However, if only for pragmatic reasons, but also for real social policy reasons they are now re-asserting control. Other former sell out countries, mainly in Southeast Asia - they saw big way asset losses out there - are now following their example. For the time being they are now kindly permitted by the World bank and IMF to establish compensation schemes, known as family cash support programmes and many other variants. Some are bolder and aim to create proto-social protection schemes. They assume more discretion on their economic and social policy.

That's good. They are reversing history; where the rulers in the US and Europe are happy to demolish their economic ownership and social protection institutions, these countries are happy to build them up.

Great Russian tarts here as well!

Guilt by association, guilt by innuendo, guilt by rumour...

Of course we've seen these tactics before - their highest expressions have been the gulag and the concentration camp. Everybody knows that promotions and job security lie in destroying Julian Assange and Wikileaks. -That's payback for the vicious, planned slaughter-for-profit that Collateral Murder exposed. Showing the dehumanized attitude with which occupation troops view the people that they're allegedly 'helping', caused a dramatic drop in support for the war effort and a loss of confidence in their new world order.

1. If Assange’s appeal is rejected, then the EAW will have force forever in Britain; if it is rejected, then that’s the beginning of its much-desired demise and may perhaps begin the process of EU dismemberment.

2. My case in 2008 was about to test the strength of the EAW but then London advised Berlin to abandon its appeal to the High Court against the lower court’s decision deeming the EAW’s ticking of three boxes – racism, xenophobia and cybercrime – as insufficient information. This infuriated Mannheim-based prosecutor Grossmann because he had not been advised that my release was an executive order matter and his agitations had been ignored by Berlin.

3. The funny moment during my trial was when the judge stated the information on the EAW was not enough to enable her to make a decision. The prosecutor stated in response that I knew what I was wanted for in Germany, but this offended against a ruling by a war lord that it is inadmissible to drip-feed information on a matter.

4. I fear in the Assange case that the Swedes can now better the EAW and have a judge sign off on it thereby overcoming the objections that a prosecutor cannot do it – but I saw fellows inside prison who won in the High Court and had the EAW dismissed, but then after that 6-month prison ordeal walked out of the prison gate to be met by police officers who re-arrested them because the issuing authority had ‘bettered’ the EAW that originally had been dismissed by the court of appeal.

5. What intrigues me in the Assange case is that initially he was good for the ‘liberal democracies’ who celebrated him because his leaks enabled dissident voices in such liberal democracies to be won over. They thrived on his revelations because it furthered their attacks on national states, but then his expose began to reach beyond, and that’s where you come in with your views that seems to threaten their limitations.
6. This is where Israel Shamir comes in with his good work to highlight that hypocrisy. Well done, Israel!

Dr Fredrick Toben
Adelaide
Australia

This is vile propaganda even for the servile UK press, but plenty of people have pointed that out already.

I just want to draw attention to the truly Orwellian way in which the arrogantly illegal interference in the electoral process in Belarus by the US empire, through its covert funding of political agents there, is referred to as "the cause of democracy." Shameless.

What rot! I've been to Belarus, and my mother's family is from Belarus, and I have there many friends. Lukashenko is hated in the West because he did not sell out Belarusian assets to the Western companies, because he did not apply for NATO, because he is a friend of Russia. Belarus survived the transition better than any ex-Soviet republic; it had less mortality and less unemployment. Would you like to bomb Belarus like you bombed Iraq, Yugoslavia and Libya?

I was disturbed by this piece as soon as I heard 'Julian's enemies'. Well to be honest it's true, some of the people on the Guardian would be called enemies. Guardian readers online even pointed out how shrill, obsessive and jilted some Guardian writers were being.

Interestingly this all happened just after the Guardian leaked a huge amount of unredacted data by mistake. Like any good person with antisocial personality disorder they then went fully mad and attacked Assange.

The New Statesman should be ashamed. Kapil is a neocon who has been gunning for Assange for a long time in places like the ultra conservative jewish magazine Tablet. It is amazing that the New Statesman would fall so low as to publish this smear.

Surely the sister of the imprisoned presidential Belarusian candidate, who is on London fighting for her brother's freedom has a bit more understanding of whether Assange is a friend of Belarus than smear merchants like Kapil.

Here is another analysis: http://jaraparilla.blogspot.com/2011/10/where-now-wikileaks.html

If this is a smear it's pretty ham fisted.

I agree with Sarah, this blog is short on facts. Kapil Komireddi undermines validity of his own argument by using such cheap lines as "He reportedly met Lukashenko's chief of staff, Vladimir Makei"

Sarah, you wrote:

"Indeed, if the sister of the opposition leader saw no crime, my professionalism would require me to concede there was no story at all".

I wrote:

"Because she is the sister of the opposition leader Sannikov, she regards herself best placed to judge Assange's role in Belarus. But to say that Sannikov is not the sole victim of Lukashenko's crackdown is not to demean him... Reporting from Minsk last year, I met young Belarusians living in fear of being paraded as traitors on live television because they feared their names had appeared in the American cables".

I did not use "reportedly" and "allegedly" in my piece - they were added by the editors here. The story I published in Tablet doesn't have any qualifiers.

Second, I did interview the "highly respected" journalist who directed this movie. Mathew Charles was scrounging the barrel to justify his actions. At one point he told me Assange needed to apologise for not repudiating Shamir - but I suspect he'll deny this. The Evening Standard ran a story about this yesterday. Charles admitted to them that the WikiLeaks cables exposed Belarusian activists. However - and this is his defence - because they were already known to the regime, it wasn't a big deal. I find this extraordinary. Does Charles really believe that the regime did not use the cables to support its prosecutions of those known activists? Didn't the cables bolster the evidence the regime already held against them? And because they're already marked, is it excusable to further jeopardise their safety?

Even if we put aside your laziness as a journalist - betrayed by your conviction that the story ought to have been folded because Assange received an activist's endorsement: how thorough - your dismissal of Tatsiana Shaputska's view, simply because her language is inadequate, is appalling.

For all your indignation, you couldn't bring yourself to disclose your full name. And after twenty-five years in the profession, you haven't taught yourself to read. How pitiful.