Will WikiLeaks unravel the American 'secret government'?

[Peter Presland]

Good work there Peter! Some good friends of Deep Politics forum are also arranging a mirror site. Members here and visitors are welcome to contribute to it but I'll be sending out some PMs and emails for this also. There are over 1600 mirrors last time I looked. And it is all good.

Thanks Magda

I've updated the mirror to the latest version now. It's a pretty straightforward process once done successfully a couple of times. I may get around to trying to automate it.

On the database server crash. It looks as though it was probably my fault. I had to create a new Apache virtual domain for the mirror and took the opportunity to rehash all the virtual servers. Restarting Apache using the rehashed virtual servers clearly fooled the database server which could no longer see the one it was connected to originally - Bloody computers!

[Magda Hassan]

They are such pedantic things. They should just know what you want. I blame the designers.

[Peter Lemkin]

Good work there Peter! Some good friends of Deep Politics forum are also arranging a mirror site. Members here and visitors are welcome to contribute to it but I'll be sending out some PMs and emails for this also. There are over 1600 mirrors last time I looked. And it is all good.

Whatever Assange's or others in Wikileaks views of events like JFK or 9-11 are there is always the hope and possibility that people with information on these will now avail themselves of this growing forest of mirrors and sites and tell what they know, with proofs.

[Magda Hassan]

Good work there Peter! Some good friends of Deep Politics forum are also arranging a mirror site. Members here and visitors are welcome to contribute to it but I'll be sending out some PMs and emails for this also. There are over 1600 mirrors last time I looked. And it is all good.

Whatever Assange's or others in Wikileaks views of events like JFK or 9-11 are there is always the hope and possibility that people with information on these will now avail themselves of this growing forest of mirrors and sites and tell what they know, with proofs.

Exactly Peter. It is there to use and that alone is worth supporting.

[Peter Presland]

Good work there Peter! Some good friends of Deep Politics forum are also arranging a mirror site. Members here and visitors are welcome to contribute to it but I'll be sending out some PMs and emails for this also. There are over 1600 mirrors last time I looked. And it is all good.

Whatever Assange's or others in Wikileaks views of events like JFK or 9-11 are there is always the hope and possibility that people with information on these will now avail themselves of this growing forest of mirrors and sites and tell what they know, with proofs.

Exactly Peter. It is there to use and that alone is worth supporting.

I agree.

What I found disappointing in the video documentary was the declared experience with all the leaks to date - that's very much including the pre-2010 stuff. Assange says that the original intent was to post the raw information in the expectation that others would jump on it disseminate it and write hard-hitting articles about it. Apart from a few notable exceptions (Trafigura, BNP membership list, Sarah Palins emails etc) it really didn't happen. That's the explanation for turning to the MSM with such massive volume and I found that quite plausible.

There is still masses of stuff on the older leaks and I'm working away at getting some of it up on WikiSpooks and producing a browsable mirror of all the torrents which are currently only available as a bulk zipped archive download. The whole lot is still readily accessible if you go looking for it though and it's disappointing that so little appears to have been done on what is still a treasure trove of leaked information.

[Peter Lemkin]

Good work there Peter! Some good friends of Deep Politics forum are also arranging a mirror site. Members here and visitors are welcome to contribute to it but I'll be sending out some PMs and emails for this also. There are over 1600 mirrors last time I looked. And it is all good.

Whatever Assange's or others in Wikileaks views of events like JFK or 9-11 are there is always the hope and possibility that people with information on these will now avail themselves of this growing forest of mirrors and sites and tell what they know, with proofs.

Exactly Peter. It is there to use and that alone is worth supporting.

I agree.

What I found disappointing in the video documentary was the declared experience with all the leaks to date - that's very much including the pre-2010 stuff. Assange says that the original intent was to post the raw information in the expectation that others would jump on it disseminate it and write hard-hitting articles about it. Apart from a few notable exceptions (Trafigura, BNP membership list, Sarah Palins emails etc) it really didn't happen. That's the explanation for turning to the MSM with such massive volume and I found that quite plausible.

There is still masses of stuff on the older leaks and I'm working away at getting some of it up on WikiSpooks and producing a browsable mirror of all the torrents which are currently only available as a bulk zipped archive download. The whole lot is still readily accessible if you go looking for it though and it's disappointing that so little appears to have been done on what is still a treasure trove of leaked information.

Peter, What you are doing [and others like you] is great. My big fear now is that those who would want all this to go away and to hide such information will start [if they have not already] to set up Wikileak-like websites to 'suck up' and hide forever information; perhaps even being able to locate the leaker - rather than to keep them anonymous. It really is the beginning of very ugly [I fear] cyberwarfare. Soon it will really be a matter [if it isn't already] of who to believe/trust. I agree, that the Wikileak model of giving to the MSM alone was not a good one. Sure, if they'd take parts of it fine, but I'd rather see alternative media and individuals who take a story and run with it. The whole internet and spread of information has taken a huge change at warp speed - and there will be forceful efforts to see that such information is buried and those who propagate or leak it put away and the keys thrown away. I'd also like to see more leaks on Corporations, polluters, banks, illegal financial happenings, drugs, etc. et al. Open up the whole Beast and lay it bare......the only way to kill it.....before it kills us all.

As to all the conspiracy notions on Wikileaks and Assange, I don't dismiss them as impossible, I only don't see the evidence and can find alternate explanations. In brief, much of what Wikileaks has on the USG seems to have come from one brave young man [who needs a medal of honor - but will likely spend his life in prison, if not executed]; those with top-secret and above information might well not have trusted Wikileaks protecting them as a source - and that might still be a worry. Things may yet change faster and further than we all think. It is a VERY fluid situation. One think I sense is real nervousness and fear on the part of the USG and other governments. I don't think it is staged. But again, anything is possible. I'm more worried about the new break-away from Wikileaks IF it is true that they will not publish the documents, but only give them to media sources to write about......that seems like a worrying model, but it is not clear exactly what they have in mind. As they go online in two days, we don't have long to wait. I also await Wikileaks Bank release which is about 2-3 weeks away. We live in interesting times.

[Peter Lemkin]

As previously announced, the Personal Democracy Forum will be hosting an event titled "A Symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet Freedom" today from 10am - 2pm ET, in New York City.
You can tune in live to the event via http://personaldemocracy.com/pdfleakslive :marchmellow:

10:00-11:00am: Remarks by Mark Pesce, Esther Dyson, Jeff Jarvis, Rebecca MacKinnon, Jay Rosen, Carne Ross, Douglas Rushkoff, Katrin Verclas and Gideon Lichfield (moderated by Micah Sifry)
11:00-11:45am: Open forum, moderated by Jeff "Oprah" Jarvis
11:45-12:00pm: Break
12:00pm-1:00pm: Remarks by Arianna Huffington, Charles Ferguson, Andrew Keen, Zeynep Tufekci, Tom Watson, Dave Winer, and Emily Bell (moderated by Andrew Rasiej)
1:00-2:00pm: Open forum, moderated by Jeff "Donahue" Jarvis

Each of our speakers will have seven to eight minutes for their remarks, and we will do our best to allow for plenty of audience give-and-take.

Some background notes: It is not our intention to try to hammer out a common position on Wikileaks or internet freedom over the course of this symposium, but to explore some common questions together, with respect for each other's intelligence and sincerity. PdF is a crosspartisan forum devoted to examining the impact of technology on politics, government and society. This is obviously a hinge moment in that unfolding process.

In addition, this is not an attempt at a "balanced" debate, but rather an effort to give people from the fields of new and old media, technology, academia, politics, and policy, a place where we could start to think together about the meaning of current events. The presence or absence of particular speakers or points of view should not be taken as meaning anything more than the fact that some smart, engaged people were available on extremely short notice, and other smart, engaged people weren't.

The hashtag for the event is #pdfleaks. There will be coffee and light refreshments available.

To watch or listen to the symposium live, go to personaldemocracy.com/pdfleakslive starting Saturday morning at 10:00am Eastern.

It is live now...and very good!!.....

[Peter Lemkin]

Yesterday's Australian rallies saw thousands of people take to the streets in support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Some 1,500 participants attended the Sydney rally at Town Hall. "Julian Assange is an Australian. That makes me and I'm sure it makes you feel very proud," Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon told the crowd, to loud cheers. Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein also addressed the rally, noting that it was necessary "to say to the Australian government, the Gillard Government ... (their) behaviour in the last two weeks has been utterly outrageous, outrageous," reported Al Jazeera.
Our WLCentral editor Asher Wolf also addressed the rally: "Wikileaks is an important public institution. Without transparency there can be no accountability and without accountability there can be no democracy," she said, quoted by IT News Simon Skew, Pirate Party spokesman, said whistleblowers were essential to democracy: "Public disclosure is in the public interest and it's completely legitimate," reports SBS.
Channel 10 has a video report from the Sydney rally. The Age has another video available online.
Our editor JLo has a photo gallery from the Sydney rally: imgur.com. ZDNet gallery: ZDNet.com.au
In Melbourne, criminal lawyer Rob Stary told the audience that the Australian government was a "sycophant" of the US. Mr Stary told the rally of hundreds of people outside the Victorian state library that the treatment of Mr Assange was proof of the "subservience of the government in bowing to the US," reports Nine MSN. He added that "What we need to do is continue to agitate publicly, we need to agitate with our so-called political representatives, to expose the sham of all this, to support WikiLeaks, to support Julian Assange, to show greater transparency and greater accountability," as quoted by ABC.
The crowd chanted "shame" and cheered another lawyer and Greens politician Brian Walters SC, who urged the government to uphold the rule of law and freedom of speech.
In Brisbane, at the second WikiLeaks rally in two days, lawyer Peter Russo told the rally that it was important to understand that the real issue at stake in the WikiLeaks case was freedom. "It's not only the freedom of the individual, it's the freedom of all of us," he said, as quoted by The Australian. Greens candidate Andrew Bartlett said: "We do not accept and we do not support governments using their power to persecute individuals, using corporate power, abusing and misusing the law, calling publicly for individuals who've not even been accused of any crime to be assassinated, to be called a terrorist," reports ABC..
Messages from London-based Australian journalist John Pilger and US dissident academic Noam Chomsky were also read at the event. Professor Chomsky said that Julian Assange was performing a civic duty. "Systems of power wish to protect themselves from citizens, while at the same time sparing no effort to intrude into private lives so as to better establish their control," the letter said, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.
After a series of speeches outside the office of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the protesters marched through central Brisbane.
Further rallies and protests are scheduled worldwide in support of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Please see our current event list, spread the work and participate if you can!

[Peter Lemkin]

Der Spiegel: Copenhagen Climate Cables: The US and China Joined Forces Against Europe
"Last year's climate summit in Copenhagen was a political disaster. Leaked US diplomatic cables now show why the summit failed so spectacularly. The dispatches reveal that the US and China, the world's top two polluters, joined forces to stymie every attempt by European nations to reach agreement.[...]
The cooperation began under the last US president, George W. Bush. In 2007 Bush's senior climate negotiator, Harlan Watson, organized a 10-year framework agreement with China on cooperation on energy and the environment. The two countries also agreed to hold a "Strategic and Economic Dialogue" -- backroom talks that neither the Americans nor the Chinese were willing to admit to at first.
Bush's successor, President Barack Obama, and the new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, continued this dialogue. During Clinton's inaugural visit to China, Beijing agreed to the formation of a "new partnership on energy and climate change," according to a US embassy dispatch dated May 15, 2009. Here too the aim was to ensure the outcome of the climate talks in Copenhagen would be favorable to Washington and Beijing."
Read more
The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables: Vatican refused to engage with child sex abuse inquiry
"The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify before an Irish commission investigating the clerical abuse of children and was angered when they were summoned from Rome, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks reveal.
Requests for information from the 2009 Murphy commission into sexual and physical abuse by clergy "offended many in the Vatican" who felt that the Irish government had "failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations", a cable says."
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The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables: Pope wanted Muslim Turkey kept out of EU
"The pope is responsible for the Vatican's growing hostility towards Turkey joining the EU, previously secret cables sent from the US embassy to the Holy See in Rome claim.
In 2004 Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, spoke out against letting a Muslim state join, although at the time the Vatican was formally neutral on the question.
The Vatican's acting foreign minister, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, responded by telling US diplomats that Ratzinger's comments were his own rather than the official Vatican position.
The cable released by WikiLeaks shows that Ratzinger was the leading voice behind the Holy See's unsuccessful drive to secure a reference to Europe's 'Christian roots' in the EU constitution. The US diplomat noted that Ratzinger 'clearly understands that allowing a Muslim country into the EU would further weaken his case for Europe's Christian foundations'."
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Le Monde: Wikileaks : les Américains se demandent où se trouve le cœur du pouvoir en Algérie (Americans ask who holds real power in Algeria)
"Qui détient le pouvoir en Algérie? Les militaires ou les civils? Une poignée de généraux qui ont la haute main sur l'armée et les services de renseignements ou le président de la République élu au suffrage universel, Abdelaziz Bouteflika?
La question continue à diviser les chancelleries étrangères tant le cœur du pouvoir à Alger est impénétrable depuis des décennies. Pour le chef de l'Etat algérien, la réponse est évidente : l'armée algérienne respecte "absolument" l'autorité d'un président qui est un civil et non un militaire. "Ça n'est pas du tout comme en Turquie", assure-t-il lors de sa première entrevue avec le général William Ward, le chef de l'Africom, la structure de commandement américaine pour l'Afrique, en novembre 2009."
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The New York Times: China Resisted U.S. Pressure on Rights of Nobel Winner
"It was just before Christmas 2009, and Ding Xiaowen was not happy. The United States ambassador had just written China’s foreign minister expressing concern for Liu Xiaobo, the Beijing intellectual imprisoned a year earlier for drafting a pro-democracy manifesto. Now Mr. Ding, a deputy in the ministry’s American section, was reading the riot act to an American attaché.
Mr. Ding said he would try to avoid “becoming emotional,” according to a readout on the meeting that was among thousands of leaked State Department cables released this month. Then he said that a “strongly dissatisfied” China firmly opposed the views of the American ambassador, Jon Huntsman, and that Washington must “cease using human rights as an excuse to ‘meddle’ in China’s internal affairs.”"
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The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer 'used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout'
"The world's biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis, according to a leaked US embassy cable.
Pfizer was sued by the Nigerian state and federal authorities, who claimed that children were harmed by a new antibiotic, Trovan, during the trial, which took place in the middle of a meningitis epidemic of unprecedented scale in Kano in the north of Nigeria in 1996."
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Der Spiegel: 'No and No Again': The Rocky US Relationship with Little Austria
"Austria may be small, but according to US Embassy dispatches from Vienna, the country causes big headaches in Washington. Not only are Austrian leaders seen as disconnected from international affairs, the country's neutrality means it is willing to do business with America's enemies.
The tone used by the US envoys in their reports to Washington ranges from resigned to openly hostile. Is it possible, they ask in bewilderment, for a tiny Alpine republic only half the size of the US state of Washington to ignore the primary objectives of American foreign policy? It would seem that it is."
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El Pais: EE UU considera Cataluña el "mayor centro mediterráneo del yihadismo" (The US considers Catalonia the "biggest mediterranean center for jihadism")
"La Embajada de EE UU en Madrid cree que Cataluña es el punto más caliente del islamismo radical en España , un escenario que debe vigilar y controlar como puente hacia el Mediterráneo. La fuerte implantación de la comunidad paquistaní y marroquí en Barcelona y la efervescente actividad de islamistas en localidades como Tarragona, Hospitalet, Badalona y Reus preocupan a los servicios de inteligencia estadounidenses que han convertido a esa comunidad en su primer objetivo de investigación. Los documentos secretos del departamento de Estado definen Cataluña como el principal centro mediterráneo de los islamistas."
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Le Monde: Guinée : Comment France et Etats-Unis ont écarté le chef de la junte (Guinea: How France and the US neutralized the chief of the junta)
"L'occasion était trop belle pour neutraliser un chef de l'Etat devenu très embarrassant. Français et Américains cherchaient à écarter le capitaine Moussa Dadis Camara depuis le massacre par des militaires de la garde présidentielle d'au moins 156 opposants à Conakry, en Guinée, le 28 septembre 2009.
Les événements du 3 décembre vont forcer le destin. Ce jour-là, le chef de la junte militaire au pouvoir depuis moins d'un an est victime d'une tentative d'assassinat. Grièvement blessé à la tête, le chef de la junte est envoyé d'urgence vers le Maroc pour y être hospitalisé. Dans la foulée, un diplomate américain en poste à Ouagadougou écrit : "La communauté internationale est d'une façon générale sur la même position. L'absence de Dadis a ouvert une fenêtre d'opportunité pour faciliter une transition démocratique."
"Bien qu'il ait été chassé de la scène violemment plutôt que par des moyens constitutionnels, il serait mieux pour la Guinée qu'il ne rentre pas dans son pays", ajoute l'ambassadrice américaine en poste à Conakry, Patricia Moller, dans un des télégrammes diplomatiques obtenus par WikiLeaks et révélés par Le Monde."
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The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables: Former Croatia PM flees over corruption claims
"The former prime minister who dominated Croatian politics for most of the past decade fled the country today as state prosecutors moved to have him arrested in connection with a major sleaze investigation.
According to cables from the US Zagreb embassy released by WikiLeaks, Ivo Sanader, the centre-right politician who stood down suddenly as prime minister in summer last year, features in several of the corruption cases currently terrorising the Croatian political class.
The country's chief prosecutor told US diplomats in Zagreb this year he had evidence that Sanader had arranged a bank loan for a business crony in return for a kickback."
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Der Spiegel: The Nigeria Report: A Cesspool of Corruption and Crime in the Niger Delta
"The leaked US diplomatic cables reveal just what multinational oil companies are up against in the Niger Delta. Security forces are ineffective and involved in dubious oil deals. The government demands millions in bribes. Even university students have earned pocket money by working as kidnappers.
Bombs used against civilians; millions paid to corrupt officials; and a kidnapping industry that employs students during university vacations: The US diplomatic cables from the Nigerian cities of Abuja and Lagos paint an unusually bleak picture of the situation in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Hardly any of the international oil companies active in the delta publishes production figures, kidnappings and hostage-taking are a daily occurence and the civilian population is suffering -- not least because they too are occasionally targets of the Nigerian Army's special forces."
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The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables: Serbia suspects Russian help for fugitive Ratko Mladić
"Russia may be withholding vital information about the whereabouts of the fugitive Bosnian Serb general and genocide suspect, Ratko Mladić, who faces war crimes charges in The Hague, senior Serbian government officials have privately told American diplomats in Belgrade.
In discussions detailed in a diplomatic cable marked "secret" and sent to Washington by US chargée d'affaires Jennifer Brush in September 2009, Miki [Miodrag] Rakić, chief of staff to the Serbian president, Boris Tadić, tells Brush it remains likely Mladić is hiding somewhere in Serbia.
But Rakić also suggests the fugitive is being assisted by "foreign sources" and hints darkly that Moscow may have better information about Mladić's exact situation than does the Serbian government."
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El Pais: Palomares: 50.000 metros contaminados con plutonio (50,000 sq.meters contaminated with plutonium)
"España y Estados Unidos tienen un problema enquistado desde 1966: el accidente nuclear en Palomares, en el que cuatro bombas atómicas cayeron en la pedanía almeriense. España decidió en 2004 descontaminar la zona e insiste en que EE UU pague parte de la limpieza y se lleve la tierra contaminada con plutonio. Así se lo transmitió el 14 de diciembre de 2009 el entonces ministro de Exteriores, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, a la secretaria de Estado, Hillary Clinton, en Washington. Moratinos reclamó, según un cable confidencial, que Clinton hiciera lo posible "para ayudar desde el punto de vista de la opinión pública española, de la que temió que se volviera en contra de EE UU si se divulgaran los resultados de un reciente estudio sobre la contaminación". Clinton no contestó. El estudio, a cuyas conclusiones ha tenido acceso EL PAÍS pero que no ha sido hecho público, concluye que en Palomares queda medio kilo de plutonio que ha contaminado unos 50.000 metros cúbicos de tierra -el volumen de 27 piscinas olímpicas-."
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The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables cast Hosni Mubarak as Egypt's ruler for life
"Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's long-serving president, is likely to seek re-election next year and will "inevitably" win a poll that will not be free and fair, the US ambassador to Cairo, Margaret Scobey, predicted in a secret cable to Hillary Clinton last year.
Scobey discussed Mubarak's quasi-dictatorial leadership style since he took power in 1981; his critical views of George Bush and American policy in the Middle East; and the highly uncertain prospects for a succession."
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[Peter Lemkin]

Julian Assange's Lawyers Warn of Imminent US Charges
Legal team for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Washington plans to invoke Espionage Act to indict their client

by Steven Morris

The US may be about to press charges against Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, one of his lawyers said today.

Jennifer Robinson said an indictment of her client under the US's Espionage Act was imminent. She said her team had heard from "several different US lawyers rumours that an indictment was on its way or had happened already, but we don't know".

According to some reports, Washington is seeking to prosecute Assange under the 1917 act, which was used unsuccessfully to try to gag the New York Times when it published the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s.

Robinson said Assange's team did not believe the US had grounds to prosecute him but understood that Washington was "looking closely at other charges, such as computer charges, so we have one eye on it".

Assange is in Wandsworth prison in south London after being refused bail on Tuesday. Sweden is seeking his extradition over allegations of sexual assault.

Speaking to ABC News, Robinson said she did not believe the Espionage Act applied to Assange, adding: "In any event he's entitled to first amendment protection as publisher of WikiLeaks and any prosecution under the Espionage Act would in my view be unconstitutional and puts at risk all media organisations in the US."

Robinson said Assange was being held in solitary confinement in London with restricted access to a phone and his lawyers.

"This means he is under significant surveillance but also means he has more restrictive conditions than other prisoners. Considering the circumstances he was incredibly positive and upbeat."

Earlier this week, the US attorney general, Eric Holder, said the United States had been put at risk by the flood of confidential diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks and he authorised a criminal investigation.

Holder said: "The lives of people who work for the American people has been put at risk; the American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that are, I believe, arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way. We are doing everything that we can.

"We have a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature. I authorised just last week a number of things to be done so that we can hopefully get to the bottom of this and hold people accountable, as they should be."

In a letter to the Guardian today, prominent supporters including John Pilger, Terry Jones, Miriam Margolyes and AL Kennedy called for Assange's release. "We protest at the attacks on WikiLeaks and, in particular, on Julian Assange ," they wrote, adding that the leaks have "assisted democracy in revealing the real views of our governments over a range of issues".