06:20 AM Noticias SIN is now in possession of all diplomatic cables relating to Dominican Republic, it has been announced, with the disclosure of a cable concerning corruption in the country’s Supreme Country of Justice and respective plans to counter it:

“…[President of the Supreme Court of Justice]Subero revealed to [ambassadors] Hertell and Bullen that SCJ Vice-President Rafael Luciano Pichardo appears to be deeply involved in official corruption and is possibly attempting to subvert the ongoing trial of individuals implicated in the 2003 fraudulent collapse of Banco Intercontinental (Baninter)…”

05:40 AM Wikileaks followers are no longer visiting an “extremist website” via Examiner

After WikiLeaks announced via twitter that their website had been removed from the ‘extremist website’ category in the catalogue of the Library of Congress, Examiner and msnbc have picked on the story.

Great part of the discussion took place under the #wlcat hashtag on twitter and has been archived as a chirpstory for easy consultation.

05:30 AM Julian Assange will take part in this year’s Splendour in the Grass festival in Australia on the 29th July with a pre-recorded video statement that will screen as part of next Friday’s session “Big Brother v Little Brother: From Government and Big Business to WikiLeaks and Anonymous, Who Really Controls Our Online Secrets?”, headlined by his mother, Christine Assange, who stated: “This is a unique opportunity to hear directly from these people the stories the mainstream media has suppressed and the things they don’t want you to know.”

Also participating are Suelette Dreyfus, author of Underground and his australian lawyer Grace Morgan.

00:00 AM A first hand account of one of yesterday’s Anonymous arrests can be found on reddit: FBI raided my house with a search warrant today (20 agents, guns drawn) because they seem to believe my 13 year old son was an integral part of the ANON ddos attack on Paypal.

Wikileaks and EFF advise :

“FBI at the door with a search warrant? You have rights. eff.org/r.86Q Print & keep this nearby: eff.org/r.18R”

2011-07-21 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

05:40 PM DataCell, as expected, has filed a complaint with the European Commission.

“The closure by Visa and MasterCard of Datcell‘s access to the payment card networks in order to stop donations to WikILeaks violates the competition rules of the European Community.” their statement reads.

Visa Europe and Mastercard Europe are accused of abusing european laws by using their dominant position in the market to prevent DataCell from processing credit card donations to Wikileaks, putting DataCell at competitive disadvantage and discriminating between costumers.

The full complaint is available for download (pdf).

02:55 PM Glenn Greenwald’s piece on how Wired deliberately witheld important parts of the recently disclosed chat logs between Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo, that would cast Lamo in a negative light and confirm that Julian Assange knew very little about the alleged source Bradley Manning’s identity :

“…Lamo lied to and manipulated Manning by promising him the legal protections of a journalist-source and priest-penitent relationship, and independently assured him that their discussions were “never to be published” and were not “for print.” Knowing this, Wired hid from the public this part of their exchange, published the chat in violation of Lamo’s clear not-for-publication pledges, allowed Lamo to be quoted repeatedly in the media over the next year as some sort of credible and trustworthy source driving reporting on the Manning case, all while publicly (and falsely) insisting that the only chat log portions it was withholding were — to use Poulsen’s words — “either Manning discussing personal matters . . . or apparently sensitive government information.”

According to these chat logs Bradley Manning claimed Julian Assange knew very little about him and took source protection very seriously. Bradley is even shown to have stated : “he wont work with you if you reveal too much about yourself “.
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, Bradley Manning proves to have insight on the cables and what they represented. Bradley Manning is also shown to claim to have sources in the White House.

Additionally, Kevin Gosztola writes these chat logs may be inadmissible in court. Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) was used by Bradley Manning to chat with Adrian Lamo and there is the possibility, as dicussed by a NetSecurity group on reddit, that part of the chat logs may have been forged.

02:05 PM From the SwedenVersusAssange vimeo account, a video on Julian’s extradition hearing. Both Kristinn Hrafnsson and Gavin MacFadyen pronounce themselves on the possibility of extradition.

Sweden x Assange: Julian Assange in Court. London, 12&13 July, 2011 from swedenversusassange on Vimeo.

Below, an excerpt from its description :

“JULIAN ASSANGE SHOULD BE FREE, BECAUSE:
HIS ARREST WARRANT WAS INACCURATE, INCOMPLETE, DESCRIBED DIFFERENT CONDUCT THAN THE ALLEGED BY THE TWO WOMEN; THERE WERE ALTERNATIVE METHODS TO QUESTION HIM AND THE ARREST WARRANT WAS NOT ISSUED BY JUDICIAL AUTHORITY.”

01:45 PM China sold missiles to Iran, Syria and Pakistan, in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime, a cable released on Monday reveals.

North Korea, too, is said to have purchased missile parts from the country to develop its missile industry.

Negligence in control of foreign missil exports has been appointed in the State Department cable as cause to the illegal sales, but John Tkacik, former State Department intelligence specialist, affirms the Chinese government is aiding and abetting the proliferation of the missile industry and has called the claims “absurd”.
Two missile firms said to have been sanctioned and closed down continue in fact to ‘function unimpeded’ according to U.S. intelligence.

14 July 2011 – On the day that Julian Assange begins his appeal against extradition to Sweden, citizen-driven media project Revolution Truth released its first short films, centered around an open letter to the US Government in support of Wikileaks. These shorts, in a project endorsed by Michael Moore, have been produced with the contributions of over 300 individuals from around the world. A major redesign of the RevolutionTruth website, also unveiled today, includes the launch of two new campaigns: one in support of accused whistleblower Bradley Manning and another encouraging solidarity with emerging democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond.

RevolutionTruth is a grassroots, wholly volunteer-led endeavor that conducts campaigns by pairing open letters to influential figures or institutions with short films made up of messages from the public. The first RevolutionTruth campaign began in December 2010 when organization founder Tangerine Bolen decided to stand up to the Obama administration’s alarming handling of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The open letter that Tangerine composed has been signed by nearly 10,000 concerned citizens and is today being released in video form with contributions from around the world.

“The goal with our original project was to show the US government that, although WikiLeaks is a complicated phenomenon, people all over the world support them. WikiLeaks offers common people access to truths we need, including the truth about abuses of power and secrecy, unethical behavior, and even criminality, on the part of both governments and corporations. While we do not endorse 100% transparency for democratic governments that need some measure of secrecy, we believe that WikiLeaks functions as a course correction in perilous times.” Tangerine Bolen

“This is great! I’m so glad you’re doing this. People have had enough of the lies. It’s up to us to make the change happen.” Michael Moore

RevolutionTruth’s second campaign kicks off with the publication of an Open Letter to accused Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, who has now spent over a year in military detention awaiting trial. As with the earlier campaign, RevolutionTruth’s Open Letter to Bradley Manning, which has the full support of the Bradley Manning Support Network and UK Friends of Bradley Manning, is intended to prompt statements of support for Bradley and video messages from around the world. A copy of the letter will also be sent to Bradley himself at Fort Leavenworth.

“People standing with Bradley Manning is important not only for Bradley, but for the US government to see that many consider Manning a hero, if he is guilty of what he is accused. The release of the Collateral Murder video and other Wikileaks documents have provided Americans a glimpse of what U.S. foreign policy does. We citizens of the United States need to take responsibility for these policies and change them.” Kevin Zeese a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network steering committee.

Finally, RevolutionTruth unveils its Global Unrest and Resistance campaign today, inviting those asserting their democratic rights in the Middle East, in Europe and elsewhere to submit messages and share the wealth of their experience with a global network concerned with all aspects of political representation and government accountability.

“All people of the world deserve the chance at a decent, meaningful, safe existence. We need just systems and legitimate democracies. We stand with our brothers and sisters who are fighting for their rights around the world.” Tangerine Bolen

RevolutionTruth is a growing, global community of people dedicated to defending WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, and legitimate democracies. RevolutionTruth is a diverse group of people from around the world who share is a common set of fundamental values centered on truth, transparency, democratic rights and freedoms, integrity, and a desire for equitable, just and sustainable systems.

Members of RevolutionTruth come from all walks of life and from over 150 countries. They speak many languages and have dramatically different life experiences and backgrounds. But they share one fundamental thing: a profound commitment to changing our world, and to using citizen-driven media, and “information by the people for the people”, in order to do so.

RevolutionTruth
Primary Contact:
Tangerine Bolen, Executive Director
Phone: 1-503-887-0773
Email: tangerine.bolen@revolutiontruth.org

We’ve learned a few important things from the full transcripts of Bradley Manning’s online chats with Adrian Lamo. Glenn Greenwald has already focussed on how Wired magazine’s decision to with-hold the full transcripts has damaged the reputations of Manning, Assange and WikiLeaks. But it’s worth examining in more detail exactly how Wired’s subterfuge has affected Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in particular.

Firstly, and most importantly, it’s now clear that Julian Assange did NOT know if Bradley Manning was the source who leaked the US cables to WikiLeaks. Manning tells Lamo that Assange “knows little about me” and “he takes source-protections uber-seriously.” Furthermore, he says, Assange “won’t work with you if you reveal too much about yourself.” Assange even instructs Manning to lie about his identity!

This blows apart the US government’s protracted efforts to suggest that Assange actively enticed Manning to hand over the cables, and thereby charge the Australian with criminal activity. In fact, it was only through his own protracted sleuth work that Manning even knew who HE was talking to: “it took me four months to confirm that the person i was communicating [with] was in fact assange”.

Why would Wired with-hold this critically important information, unless they were actively co-operating with US agents trying to fabricate charges against Assange? Given that Lamo had notified authorities of Manning’s alleged actions while still continuing to chat with him, it’s logical to assume the Feds would have wanted to censor any published details. Wired appears to have willingly complied.

The full transcripts also destroy whatever shreds remain of Adrian Lamo’s tattered reputation. The ex-hacker – who has been described as “the FBI’s star witness against WikiLeaks” – deliberately deceived Manning from the beginning, then lied repeatedly to have the public believe that he didn’t. He claimed to be both a journalist and a minister, repeatedly assuring Manning that their conversations were “never to be published”. Why would Wired redact these portions of the transcripts, expect to maintain the illusion that Lamo is a credible source?

In fact, Lamo comes across as a sociopath. His callous disregard for Manning’s fraught emotional state is evident throughout the transcripts. Lamo repeatedly asks about Assange, and how he can get in contact with him. He even offers to work for WikiLeaks. At one stage Manning pours his heart out while Lamo goes away to have a cigarette break. When he gets back, Lamo presses Manning for more details of confidential data and Manning snaps: “im not a source for you… im talking to you as someone who needs moral and emotional fucking support”.

Ironically, it seems Manning only reached out to Lamo after reading a Wired article about Lamo’s own experiences as a sexually confused, frequently homeless, drug-addicted “child prodigy” hacker with Aspbergers Syndrome. He really couldn’t have picked a worse target. Towards the end of the chat logs, when Lamo has already snitched on his “friend”, he asks Manning if he is a “leftist” or a “centrist”. Manning rebuffs such political pigeon-holing. “I’m a fan of of realpolitik myself,” boasts Lamo.

Realpolitik is the favoured politics of Kissinger and the neo-conservatives, where moral principles do not apply and the end always justifies the means. I wonder what the USA’s favourite dictators in the Middle East think of such ideology nowadays?

Wired Editor-In-Chief Evan Hansen seems a bit more conflicted, writing a Huffington Post article titled: “Is Bradley Manning a Traitor or a Hero?” Evans plays Pontius Pilate, wringing his hands over the “divisive national debate about the role and legitimacy of whistleblowers” while claiming that Wired only held back details of the chat logs “out of respect for Manning’s privacy”. The facts suggest otherwise.

Why can’t Hansen just admit that he considers Manning a dangerous traitor, that he happily helped sell him out, and that he protected Lamo on instructions from the government? It seems neither Hansen nor Lamo have any real moral compass. They take their orders from authority and cling to “patriotic” cliches for justification. While innocent lives are destroyed, Hansen and Lamo are left swinging in the breeze, unable to justify their own actions, unwilling to repent them.

Meanwhile Tim Webster, the US Army Counterintelligence agent who first talked Lamo into working with the feds, is doing a good Jack Nicholson “Code Red” impersonation in the Wired comments:

“Manning is a traitor. You and others like you can cry and moan and wring your hands and pace back and forth while braying the words “hero” and “duty” and “patriotism” all you want — words which you and your ilk know nothing about — but rest assured that Manning will get precisely what he deserves (that is, almost: apparently death is off the table).”

I’m sure Webster is a big fan of Wired magazine. More discerning readers should by now be cancelling their subscriptions.

How Wired Magazine Tried (And Failed) To Help The US Government Frame Julian Assange

WikiLeaks front-man Julian Assange will front the high court in London on July 12 for his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange has been under house arrest in England for over six months, following a ruling in February at a London district court that the extradition of Assange to Sweden was valid and would not breach any of his human rights.

Assange’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that he would face an unfair trial in Sweden since the press and the public are excluded from parts of sexual assault trials.

Assange voluntarily turned himself in to the police in the UK after Sweden filed a European Arrest Warrant for him.

A widely held view amongst WikiLeaks’ supporters is that the extradition to Sweden is a preface to an eventual trial in the US; and that extradition for the charges against Assange would not be pursued if it was any ordinary citizen.

Assange and his colleagues at the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks have subjected the US government to extreme duress and embarrassment due to its publication of many thousands of US diplomatic cables including: the July 12 Baghdad Collateral Murder Video and other Iraq war documents; material on extrajudicial killings in Kenya, and the Guantanamo Bay files, to name a few.

Julian Assange is an Australian citizen and deserves all the support our government can offer him. Instead he was thrown to the wolves. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard failed to support Assange and called the leaks “an illegal act” according to an article in The Australian in 2009.

Gillard came under widespread condemnation for failing to give support to Assange. Hundreds of prominent lawyers, journalists, editors, and academics signed a letter to the Gillard government calling for her to support Assange but the government has maintained its hardline stance from the outset.

Assange’s legal team will include prominent human rights lawyers Gareth Peirce and Ben Emmerson, a change from his representitives at the original hearing.

Wikileaks continues its release of over 250,000 US diplomatic cables with 16,068 of the 251,287 cables published so far; and the cables will continue to come out, day by day.

2011-07-11 Assange to appeal extradition to Sweden

In the Detention Memorandum (Häktningspromemorian) there is an attachment, “Bilaga – Skäligen misstänkt”, that lists all the sex crimes that Julian Assange is suspected of. It is a long list. It is one rape, one sexual coercion and five sexual molestations. Sofia Wilén is the the alleged victim of rape. According to the police investigation Anna Ardin is supposed to be the victim of six sex crimes.

In this article, that will be short, I will look closer at the alleged sexual molestation, the one that is supposed to have occured on Wednesday August 18. But before that, just a comment. The interview with Anna Ardin was on August 21. The interview was conducted over the phone and lasted for 49 minutes. During this time the police took Anna’s story and they also read back to her the contents of the interview. The interview is what is called “konceptförhör”. It is just a summary of what the interviewing officer thinks is important and is the officer’s interpretation of what is said. When I read the interview I have a very hard time finding five descriptions of sexual molestations. One must be the alleged destruction of a condom. And the other one Julian’s rubbing of his naked body against Anna. But I can’t find the other three. If anyone that reads this can help me to find three more sexual molestations I will be thankful.

According to Anna’s interview this is what happened on the Wednesday August 18. “At one point, on Wednesday 18 August, he had suddenly taken off all his clothes on his lower body and then rubbed against her body, with his erect penis against Anna.” If you read this out of context it sure sounds like Julian is some kind of freak that undresses his lower body and rubs himself onto unexpecting ladies that are in the vincinity. “Anna said that she felt this strange behavior and uncomfortable”. Just from this description, and it happened during the day, it sure sounds weird and it is seems reasonable that Anna felt it was uncomfortable.

But what did really take place? And why is Anna telling the police about it? Is this really important? When I worked on the extremely long article “Sex, lies, no videotape and more lies” it was of the opinion that this accusation was just thrown in there to make it more credible that Julian at least had done something that was criminal. Today I have come to a different conclusion.

First let’s look at what really happened on that particular Wednesday based on the contents of Anna’s police interview. It isn’t easy since Anna leaves out so much information that she obviously does not want the police to know about. But there is part of a sentence that explains the context. Anna “… had therefore moved down to a mattress and slept there instead of up in bed with Assange.” What we can understand is that Anna was in bed. And that this incident took place late at night because it says “… slept there instead of up in bed with Assange.” It is late at night, Anna is in bed. Julian removes his clothes, as you normally do before going to bed, and leaves some clothing on his upper body. Could it be a T-shirt? The he gets into bed where Anna is. He obviously has an erection. And he touches Anna with his lower body and erect penis. Rubbing according to Anna. Anna then gets out of bed and decides to sleep on a matress on the floor instead of sleeping next to Julian in the bed.

“To a question Anna answers that Assange had stayed in her flat but that they hardly slept together as Assange had been awake at night working on his computer. When he went to bed, at approximately at 7 o’clock in the morning, Anna, in principle got up.”

From Anna’s interview we can conclude that Wednesday was one of the rare nights the couple actually slept together. Julian in bed and Anna on a matress on the floor. According to Anna this was due to Julian’s peculiar behaviour. It would be of interest to size of the bed. Was it 120, 140, 160 or 180 cm wide?

What Anna is describing in her police interview, and what the police and prosecutors regard as sexual molestation, does not look like anything out of the ordinary when a man and a woman, who have been intimate, share a bed together over a period of time. You touch each other and sometimes you make passes without saying anything. To me it seems like Julian is trying to say to Anna that he would like some intimacy. Nothing peculiar. The only thing that is weird to me is Anna’s description of events and that the police did not try to investigate to find out what it was all about.

I must say I am surprised that Anna did not accuse Julian of indecent exposure as well. At some stage he must have undressed in such a way that Anna had seen his naked body and experienced discomfort in some way.

Why is it that Anna tells the police about this event? There is one reason. One reason I did not think about until I talked to Peter Kemp, the Australian lawyer that gave me motivation to continue to write about this case.

In Kajsa Borgnäs’ interview we can read “Anna had been sad and thoughtful, she wondered how she could explain for example at a trial that she had let him to stay on despite everything that had happened.” This is from Anna’s and Kajsa’s conversation at a party on August 20 after Anna had been to the police. It is before Anna is interviewed by the police. More from Kajsa’s interview. “Then it had also emerged that police had taken up a report from Anna and that the police had interpreted it as if Anna also was a victim of crime. It was then that Anna told her that Julian first did not want to use a condom and that they had wrestled about it and that Anna had curled up.”

From what Anna is telling Kajsa at the party we can understand that Anna does not agree with the police that she is a victim of rape. How come Anna didn’t make that clear when she was at the police station. At the party Anna realizes that she will be interviewed by the police because the police believes that she is a victim of rape. It is in this context the line “… she wondered how she could explain for example at a trial that she had let him to stay on despite everything that had happened” should be understood. Anna knows that she has to be able to explain why Julian stayed in her flat for so long, and why she decided to move out on Thursday evening.

In the interviews with Donald Boström and Petra Ornstein it is evident that Anna learned about Julian’s intimacy with Sofia Wilén on Thursday August 19. Why did Anna move out on that Thursday? Does it have to do with Anna’s finding out about Julian’s relationship with Sofia?

My conclusion is that Anna in her interview with the police on August 21 is making up the story of the alleged molestation on Wednesday in order to get a “justified reason” to move out of the flat on Thursday. It is a cover story. “The night after, Anna had stayed with a companion when she did not want to hang out or stay close to Assange because of his strange behavior.” When Anna offers an explanation to the reason she moved out she is avoiding questions from the police to the reason she moved out of the flat. And evidently it worked. The police did not ask any questions. It seemes like a strategy that worked. But is has consequences.

Anna wants us to believe that when she experienced Julian rubbing his naked body and penis against her it was so uncomfortable that she decided to move out the following day. If the rubbing is so uncomfortable, why didn’t she move out earlier when allegedly much worse events had taken place. And if Anna was sexually assaulted on Friday August 13 why is that she decided to tell people that Julian was welcome to stay, she arranged a crayfish party for him, she tweeted about how amazing it was to be next to him and the coolest smartest people and why did she decide to become his press secretary? It does not make any sense.

Anna’s remarkable story about the events on Wednesday August 18 is just additional compelling evidence that the Anna’s story of sexual assault is made up. It is proof that nothing had happened before Wednesday August 18 and that nothing happened on Wednesday August 18. It just proves that Anna’s story is a deliberate and calculated lie. And that the police and the prosecutors are sleeping.

2011-07-13 Weird accusation or proof of lies? More about the Assange case

Next time you see a negative media report on Julian Assange or Wikileaks, have a think about who is writing it, and why. Behind every character-assassinating “newsy” hit-piece you will discover a writer or a publisher (usually both) with an agenda. And you don’t have to look too far to find it.

I was reminded of this after I complained about a particularly nasty article on a Hollywood news site. The author couldn’t seem to distinguish Wikileaks’ legal activities from illegal hacking by groups like Anonymous and LulzSec. Worse yet, he insisted that Assange and all these hackers were terrorists on a par with Al Qaeda and deserved to be punished accordingly. A little investigation revealed that the writer was heavily involved in the Blu Ray DVD industry – to him, and to Hollywood in general, pirate hackers represent a serious threat to profitability. What’s Wikileaks got to do with that? Well, who cares? Just get your hands off our Intellectual Property!

You might expect a more level-headed approach from former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, a last-minute replacement on a recent Wikileaks public forum. Evans said he was against attempts to “persecute or prosecute” Assange, but nevertheless labelled him an “anarchically-minded autocrat”. He calmly argued that leaks of secret government information “won’t contribute to better government” but would “inhibit internal communication within government” and lead to worse government decision-making.

Evans then wrote an article expounding his views in more detail. He neatly categorised leaks into three categories. While conceding that some leaks genuinely serve the public interest (never mind how or by whom that is defined), he warned that “some leaks are indefensible”.

“This category includes leaks that put intelligence sources or other individuals at physical risk … It also includes leaks that genuinely prejudice intelligence methods and military operational effectiveness; expose exploratory positions in peace negotiations (invariably helping only spoilers); or disclose bottom lines in trade talks.”

Now, never mind that even the US government admits Wikileaks revelations have never led to a single casualty. Let’s consider Evans’ definition of “military operational effectiveness”. Did the Afghan War Logs, including the Collateral Damage video, prejudice “operational effectiveness”? Well, um, what exactly IS the operation in Afghanistan anyway? After 10 years and countless deaths, the general public still have no idea. But it obviously hasn’t been very “effective”, and that’s hardly Wikileaks’ fault.

Or what about “peace negotiations”? Was it a bad thing when the Palestine Papers revealed that the US-backed Palestinian Authority had offered just about every possible concession to Israel, only to be knocked back? Is it against the public interest to reveal that the Saudi king wanted the USA to bomb Iran? Or what about disclosing the “bottom lines in trade talks”? Which side decides what is in whose best interest?

To gain some insight, perhaps we should consider Gareth Evans’ own history with regard to military operational effectiveness, peace negotiations, and trade talks. From his Wikipedia entry:

“In 1991, during a political storm over Indonesian military violence in East Timor, in his capacity as Australia’s foreign minister, Evans defended the Indonesian military junta’s actions by describing the Dili massacre as ‘an aberration, not an act of state policy’. This was despite growing evidence (both within Australian intelligence and the international media) of increasingly violent Indonesian military efforts to protect and extend their business interests in East Timor — interests that included coffee plantations, marble mines and large oil contracts — by utilising starvation, napalm, torture and death camps. Oil contracts that Evans himself had co-signed with the Indonesian military junta that enabled Australian companies to share with the Suharto family in what would later be established as clearly East Timor’s oil.

“This connection was highlighted during an extensively publicised video recorded in a private jet over the Timor Sea. Senator Evans, replete with champagne, offered an astonishingly naive toast, characterising the Timor Sea oil contract as “… uniquely unique”. Later, in a coincidental occurrence, when carriers of a secretly-filmed video exposing the Dili massacre arrived in Australia, they were inexplicably strip-searched by customs officials.”

Obviously, the man has a history of dramas with leaks. But despite such clearly incriminating evidence against his own character, Gareth Evans concludes that “it simply cannot be left to the judgement of WikiLeaks and media outlets to make the necessary calls without consulting relevant officials.” M’kay?

SEE HERE FOR MORE

But Mr Evans, the first Australian senator to drop an F-bomb in the Senate, reserves his strongest criticism for a third category of leaks: scurrilous leaks of personal information which serve no public interest whatsoever. One can only wonder how the former Labor Party senator would categorize his own extra-marital affair with former Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot, which was leaked to the press in 2002. Kernot’s 1997 defection to the Labor Party had by then led to the collapse of the Democrats, who were once the only serious challenger to the two main parties.

At least Evans was polite in his criticism of Wikileaks and Assange. Gushing over her colleagues’ brilliance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, The Atlantic’s Jennie Rothenberg Gritz (a senior editor) took a far more personal approach:

“The panelists at the festival’s WikiLeaks discussion seemed to agree on one thing: Julian Assange is creepy. As Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain quipped, the only thing the pale, nihilistic Assange needs to be a James Bond villain is a hairless cat.

Lest there be any doubt, the second para confirms that “the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief is the villain in this story”. So who are the heroes? One is The Atlantic’s national correspondent James Fallows, who bizarrely insists that Wikileaks has made traditional media like the New York Times look better than ever. The other is fellow Atlantic writer Zittrain, who just as bizarrely claims that Bradley Manning’s leak of several thousand classified diplomatic cables shows just how fantastically well the US government’s network security functions.

“Talk about a glass 999,999 one-millionths full,” he drools, “rather than one one-millionth empty.”

So what is the “Aspen Ideas Festival” anyway? Politico.com calls it “DC’s Summer Camp”. Salon.com’s Alex Pareene describes it as one of The Atlantic’s “little parties for America’s ruling elite” – a much better way to make money than “producing a magazine full of good journalism.”

“The best thing the organizers could do to solve America’s most pressing problems would probably be to encase the city of Aspen in an impenetrable dome on the last day of the festival, trapping all participants and attendees inside, forever.”

Of course all this is nothing new. Politicians and the establishment media have been taking pot-shots at Assange and Wikileaks ever since they arrived on the scene. Glenn Greenwald wrote a brilliant expose in December 2010 and things have only gotten worse since then.

But right now, with Assange facing extradition to Sweden, and with a farcically extra-judicial “Grand Jury” seeking to haul his ass to the USA, we should expect even more ruthless mainstream media attacks. So please, before you drink the Kool-Aid, take a good look at who’s selling it.

2011-07-11 Look Who’s Whacking WikiLeaks

08:00 PM Zinnia Jones who contributed with chat logs to the NY Mag piece on Bradley Manning releases statement about it, says unredacted logs will be made available next week.

I provided them with our logs because I wanted them to see a different side of Bradley. I will be releasing the unredacted logs next week so that everyone can read them. After all of the stories portraying him as mentally unstable and revealing his problems at home and in the military, I felt it was important for people to know that there was a time when he seemed satisfied with his life.

07:45 PM assangedidnot.com A collection of evils Julian Assange is not to blame for – and respective culprits.

07:35 PM Senator Scott Ludlam’s speech on the ASIO bill that was passed in Australia:

…Should our clandestine Cold War era spy agency be tracking down Mr Assange, maybe his family if they travel abroad, people working for that organisation, journalists, or people he is talking to or that that organisation is involved with? It appears that the reason that this bill has been known as the ‘WikiLeaks amendment’ in the Attorney’s department is that that is precisely what is intended. The committee simply did not address that issue, and neither did the officer at the table when we asked during the inquiry. This is one example of how a person or organisation outside Australia, combined with the notion of Australia’s foreign relations, very considerably expands the scope of ASIO’s activities.

07:30 PM “Two years ago, U.S. diplomats acknowledged that Guam and Japan may not be immune from attacks from North Korea, according to a 2009 secret U.S. Embassy cable.” via Guampdn

05:45 PM New York Magazine publishes profile on Bradley Manning, authored by Steve Fishman.

Glenn Greenwald’s response to the article, “The Motives of Bradley Manning” is truly a must read:

…What Fishman’s article actually does is bolster the previous view of Manning’s alleged leaks as motivated by noble and understandable horror at what the U.S. was doing in Iraq specifically and that region generally, and a resulting desire to take action to shed light on what he was seeing and to do what he could to stop it…

05:10 PM A theatre play inspired by Bradley Manning, The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning will tour in March and April 2012.:

…the play will not be a docu-drama but an exploration of the issues and technology involved and young people’s attitudes towards accountability and justice.

05:00 PM “Bulgaria’s late top banker Emil Kyulev, who was shot dead in 2005, has been described as top money launderer in a diplomatic cable of the US embassy in Sofia, sent on the very day of the murder.” via Novinite

2011-07-04 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

Italian police

State Police claim they have arrested the “the promoter” and some leading figures of the Italian cell of “Anonymous”, the hacker group.  So far no names have been released.

The raids were carried out by the anti-crime investigators of the National Computer Center  and coordinated by the Public Prosecutor of Rome. Another person in the Swiss canton of Canton Ticino has also been arrested.

Local press here expect further arrests to follow.

In a statement, the Italian State police said that Anonymous had caused substantial damage to institutions and companies. Some sites were unable to operate for some time.

Out of all of the current hacker groups, Anonymous is the largest, but is also populated by the least technical people. Some of its members carry out attacks using software downloaded from the Internet and do not carry out the most basic attempts to secure their IP address.

There has been no official announcement from Anonymous about the arrests.
Read more: http://www.techeye.net/security/italian-coppers-arrest-anonymous-cell#ixzz1RDhoc9Fu