United States

Various media outlets since yesterday have reported on a secret US embassy cable showing a Norwegian third-party facilitator in the peace process between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the Philippine government discussing details of the peace talks with a representative of the US embassy in Manila. The cable puts to question Norway’s avowed impartiality in the peace processes it is involved in.

In the cable marked “Secret” because of the sensitivity of the conversation, Norwegian Special Envoy Vegar Brynildsen met with US embassy political officers on February 3, 2010 to discuss Norwegian efforts to facilitate peace talks between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. (10MANILA235)

The cable carried a “Strictly protect” clause since Brynildsen was seriously concerned that discussion of his meeting “could call into question the discretion of the Norwegian facilitators”.

Media outlets who reported on this particular cable focused on Byrnildsen’s observations on the peace process, the NDFP, its chief political consultant Jose Ma. Sison and the Left’s participation in 2010 Philippine presidential elections. Byrnildsen commented that Sison appeared “not in control” of the movement in the Philippines, citing alleged differences between the Europe-based negotiators and the Philippine-based leadership.

The NDFP represents the revolutionary movement that has been waging a four-decade long “people’s war” against the Philippine government and US imperialism. Sison, the NDFP’s chief political consultant, was previously listed as a “terrorist” by the US and EU. In 2009, the European Court of First Instance removed Sison’s name from the EU list.

Byrnildsen said it was a “real challenge” to work as facilitator while not knowing the inner workings of the NDFP. He also said that he was not “positively impressed with the quality of Philippine government intelligence on the NDFP”.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.

10:50 PM WikiLeaks releases continue to receive significant coverage in Taiwan.
Newspaper United Daily News reports: "The leaked AIT (American Institute in Taiwan) cables are like a magnifying glass in which politicians' abilities to enchant their voters has been removed and hence, the leaked information has set a time-bomb for next year's presidential and legislative elections".

09:00 PM According to a U.S. Embassy cable from October 2006, three bomb explosions may have been orchestrated by the Government of Ethiopia in an attempt to justify its crackdown on Oromo political activists:

"The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) said that the intended terror plot had failed and the bombs had mistakenly gone off while the suspects were preparing them while hiding out at an illegally built house. Two of the suspects died immediately, while another died on the way to the hospital. One other is in critical condition. The police task force reported having others in custody related to the plot and that evidence shows the terrorists had ties to Oromo groups (…)", the cable reads.

Authored by Nikolas Kozloff

"Loco Chávez Time"

Underscoring the highly sensitive political environment in Venezuela, U.S. diplomats alerted Washington in 2008 to an odd incident which had occurred at the Caracas airport. One evening, the manager for American Airlines in Venezuela called the U.S. Embassy to report that the captain and crew of flight 903 were being held at the airport. What was the reason? Apparently, upon landing a crew member had remarked "'Welcome to Venezuela. Local Chávez time is' X."

One year earlier, Venezuela had created its own time zone, and most likely the crew member was simply reminding the passengers of this fact so as to turn their clocks back 30 minutes. However, one passenger thought the crewmember had actually said "loco Chávez time" while Venezuelan immigration officials claimed the actual quote was "the hour of the crazy Chávez and his women." American Airlines diffused the situation by flying the captain and crew out of Venezuela shortly thereafter and offering profuse apologies to Chávez authorities.

"Fascist" Elements Within Chávez's Coalition?

In another unrelated cable, the U.S. Embassy made explosive and incendiary charges regarding Chávez's inner circle. During a lunch, a "well respected political economist" told embassy staff that Minister of Public Works and Housing Diosdado Cabello "was expanding his network of corruption into the financial sector." Cabello, the source claimed, had joined with several other veterans of Chávez's 1992 attempted coup and this "fascist and military" trend "was gaining ascendancy within Chavismo" to the detriment of older leftists.

Authored by Nikolas Kozloff

Drug Trafficking Airline?

More incendiary revelations from WikiLeaks: now comes a cable from 2008 reporting on U.S. wariness of Aeropostal, an airline whose owners, the Makled family, were "Venezuela's preeminent drug traffickers." When Aeropostal sought to extend its flights to the U.S., the American Embassy in Caracas recommended that the request be denied. Furthermore, diplomats believed that the Chávez government's decision to allow the Makleds to purchase Aeropostal "sheds further doubt on Venezuelan aviation security."

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was so worried about Walid Makled that it issued a report entitled "Venezuela: Business Entrepreneur Dominates Cocaine Trade." The report asserted that Makled leveraged "his involvement in the transportation industry to facilitate drug shipments and provide cover for his own illicit activities."

Speaking to the Americans, an Aeropostal representative rejected the allegations but admitted that the new owners of the airline "know nothing about aviation." U.S. diplomats however were unconvinced, remarking that "this claim of ignorance about aviation seems odd, when according to the DIA report, the Makleds own a small airport they use to ferry drugs to Mexico twice a week."

Dodd to Chávez: Give Peace Corps a Chance

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

A redress is a means to set right, to remedy or rectify; or a satisfaction for wrong done.

On #Sept17 US Day of Rage has peaceable assemblies of people planned in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.  We call on the rest of the nation to join us and #occupywallstreet.

Why?

Wall Street is a huge contributor to the political machine, which in turns enables Wall Street's corporate plunder of our nation. Both the Democratic and Republican parties set the bankster agenda because of the MONEY. When we at US Day of Rage speak of 'taking the MONEY out of politics', we have no choice but to focus on the sources of the MONEY.

Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful interests have usurped our nation’s civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and national security.

Authored by Nikolas Kozloff

Chávez's Former Wife Herma Marksman

At the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, diplomatic staff routinely spoke to the rightist Chávez opposition during the Bush years. But in 2004, an odd encounter occurred between the Americans and Chávez's former wife, Herma Marksman, who held a rather disparaging view of the Venezuelan president. Marksman, a history professor who was married to Chávez between 1984 and 1993, told U.S. diplomats that the firebrand populist was ambitious from an early age and "even thought of running the country as a 20 year-old."

Later, as a junior officer, Chávez fell under the influence of Douglas Bravo, a former Communist and guerrilla leader from the 1960s. According to Marksman it was Bravo, and not Chávez, who developed the political philosophy of the Bolivarian Revolution. Though Marksman cast Chávez as an intellectual lightweight, she added that he "should not be underestimated." The Venezuelan was "an excellent storyteller, who often characterizes his opponents as devils, which is a powerful religious symbol to the poor."

According to Marksman, Chávez was unscrupulous, "trusted few people" and "does not have true friends." If he had a problem, Marksman added, Chávez would only confide in his brother Adan or Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Marksman remarked cryptically that several individuals within the Chávez government were "dangerous," including some figures in the inner circle such as Diosdado Cabello (for more on him, stay tuned for future posts).

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.
The @wikileaks twitter account is constantly being updated with the latest WikiLeaks/Cablegate2 news.

08:40 PM Extraterrestrial life confirmed, by Tajik leader.

05:20 PM Both U.S. Embassy in Tashkent and UNICEF opposed a boycott to child labor in the cotton industry in Uzbeskistan, seemingly in an attempt to keep good relations with the country. Cables show both institutions overlooked NGOs reports regarding exploitation of children, preferring to rely on information from ‘staff of international organizations on the ground in Uzbekistan’.

Despite NGO findings of coercion and intimidation, in a cable dated January 9, 2009, the Embassy still continued to report its belief that child labor was not forced, prefering to use the term "mobilized" versus "forced labor" and that school-children's cotton picking was "an ingrained part of the local culture" and was an "exhausting rite of passage":

"Many students look forward to the annual mobilization to pack their guitars, trail mix-equivalent snacks, vodka (for university students), and head out to the farms. The work can be exhausting, but they make the best of it. Students sometimes have campfires and enjoy evening entertainment, which provide opportunities to mingle with members of the opposite sex more freely than at home."

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.

09:30 PM U.S. Embassy cables published by WikiLeaks regarding pharmaceutical drugs and the U.S. Government’s efforts to raise medicine prices in developing countries are the subject of a piece authored by James Love, where he also comments on media reaction to the publication of Cablegate2 by WikiLeaks:

While I join those who are greatly saddened by this lapse in security, and aware of the consequences, I am also shocked at the bitter attacks on WikiLeaks, which seem unbalanced, under the circumstances.

After reading these cables, it is difficult to stomach the defenses of US secrecy. Forcing developing countries to raise the price of drugs has predictable and well known consequences -- it kills people, and increases suffering. Many people could care less -- including reporters and editors of newspapers. How much of this ends up in the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Guardian these days? But others who do care now have more access to information, and more credibility in their criticisms of government policy, because of the disclosures of the cables.

09:00 PM Cables show that former Blackwater employees continued to work in Iraq after the firm was banned from the country following a shooting in 2007, during which guards hired by the company killed 17 Iraqi citizens.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.

>> Updates on WikiLeaks news from #wlfind twitter hashtag (as curated by @wikileaks):

* FBI Director asked Mubarak for Egyptians' fingerprint records for FBI 'global fingerprint database'.

* Saudi King Abdullah "must have had a hand" in forced divorce verdict, maybe to "set an example".

* An entire report of the involvement of Greece and Souda bay military base on the Iraq war.

* Palestine Authority pursuit of Israel through the ICC would be viewed as war by Israel.

* Greeks were told that US base in Crete had no involvement with NATO bombing. Truth: it supplied fuel to B52.

* Israeli official: "We don't do Gandhi well" in reference to how Israel deals with nonviolent protests.

* "Unrest December 2009 Athens - What happened" : A full report from US embassy cables.

* U.S. Ambassador : "Singapore elects, um selects its President".

U.S. media outlets have recently been abuzz about new documents showing that, for the past decade, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) ran a secret anti-terrorism unit headed by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials. Not only did this "Intelligence Division" -- which some have described as the NYPD's "own version of the CIA" -- blur the lines previously separating domestic law enforcement and national security, but the Division's "Demographics Unit" deliberately targeted racial minorities as part of a "human mapping" system modeled on Israel's operations in the West Bank.

The Huffington Post reported:

"Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying. ...

"The department has dispatched teams of undercover officers, known as 'rakers,' into minority neighborhoods ... according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as 'mosque crawlers,' to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing."

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.

Cablegate2 release
WikiLeaks' full Cablegate archive became available online, primarily due to the negligent publishing of its password in a book authored by Guardian journalist David Leigh.

Now the 251.287 US Embassy cables are also available through WikiLeaks and in searchable format at cables.mrkva.eu.
The whistleblowing organization urges the public to download and mirror the Cablegate2 archive and to continue the disclosure of the important information contained in the cables, by helping Al-Jazeera search the documents and sharing information via twitter using the hashtag #wlfind.

WikiLeaks has released a Statement on the circumstances leading to the disclosure of the archive:

…‘Every day that the corrupt leadership of a country or organization knows of a pending WikiLeaks disclosure is a day spent planning how to crush revolution and reform.

Authored by Nikolas Kozloff

As more and more WikiLeaks cables get released, the Brazilian-U.S. diplomatic relationship has become increasingly illuminated. Though somewhat wary of each other, Washington and Brasilia sometimes saw eye to eye on matters of geopolitical importance. Take, for example, both countries' handling of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Under the helm of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil cultivated a strategic alliance with Venezuela and publicly the two nations embraced South America's "pink tide" to the left. Yet, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Brazil may have shared Washington's concern over Chávez's rising geopolitical importance, particularly in the Caribbean theater.

During the Bush years, American diplomats kept a close bead on Venezuela's growing partnerships in areas far afield. In Jamaica, for example, U.S. officials conducted a "sustained effort to dissuade" the authorities from supporting Chávez's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Concerned over Venezuela's rising star in the region, the Americans met with the Jamaican political opposition. Writing to her superiors in Washington, U.S. ambassador in Kingston Brenda Johnson expressed "concerns over the influence of Venezuelan money and energy supplies in Jamaica in the years ahead."

Monitoring Chávez in Jamaica

During a local cricket match, Bruce Golding of Jamaica's opposition Labour Party approached the ambassador to request a meeting. Asking that the U.S. hold the information in "strict confidence," Golding revealed that his party's concern over Chávez had "heightened in recent weeks." Confidentially, he continued, a "senior person in the government" had passed him "sensitive inside information," and "a number of persons within the government" were "frightened over the secrecy" concerning Jamaica's official dealings with Chávez.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.
- See @wlfind for some of the latest information found in the newly released WikiLeaks cables.

>> Updates on WikiLeaks news from #wlfind twitter hashtag (as curated by @wikileaks):

* US Embassy: rights "deteriorated" under Honduras coup regime. Yet State Department never decried it.

* List of US programs initially considered for suspension in Honduras after June 28, 2009 coup.

* 240 WikiLeaks cables of big pharma exclusivity deals.

* Honduran anti-coup activist found decapitated, country's FBI detained him earlier that day.

* Diamond aircraft used for civilian surveillance, sold to China, US, Saudi Arabia.

* U.S. Ambassador: "eroded trust in New Zealand thereby threatening intelligence cooperation" response: "bully tactics".

* Nestle was buying Mugabe farm milk in unmarked tanker - previous owner forced to sell farm cheap.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.
- See @wlfind for some of the latest information found in the newly released WikiLeaks cables.

>> Updates on WikiLeaks news from #wlfind twitter hashtag (as curated by @wikileaks):

* Israel: A promised land for organized crime?

* German export of 184 lethal viruses to US Army for breeding.

* The cable on German spy sats & the BND that Der Spiegel decided not to publish.

* Video surveillance in Germany, an interesting perspective from the Duesseldorf Police Chief.

* Belarus moves to control the Internet based on Sweden, France, Germany, US.

* US embassy reports on human cloning and UFO cult in Canada.

* Kenya: Mungiki history traced to back to 1989 by US embassy.

* UN: "Collateral Murder" incident happened before. Reuters photojournalist shot at Abu Ghraib. No prosecution.

Wikileaks releases 55 thousand cables from the U.S. embassies in Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, Russia, and Venezuela, among others. Through their official channels they asked for citizen participation in analyzing them. They also asked that they post their finds by sending them to @wikileaks on Twitter under the hashtag #wlfind. You can take a look at the cables yourself by visiting this link: http://wikileaks.org/tag/TU_0.html or http://www.cablegatesearch.net/search.php.

As a consequence of this release, Wikileak's Californian DNS hoster, Dynadot, "has received a PATRIOT act production order for information on Julian Assange", according to their website. It also mentioned that it had been complied and that "the production order seeks all available information on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, for the US grand jury in Alexandria, Washington."

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.

10:45 PM WikiLeaks will make 'several important announcements' via twitter.

So far, a confirmation that the claimed Domscheit-Berg destroyed leaks include the videos of a major US atrocity in Afghanistan. Likely referring to footage of the Garani massacre.

09:05 PM The United States attempted to send a group of 22 Uyghur Guantanamo Bay detainees to El Salvador, cables dating from the 2005-2007 period show. The group had been found innocent of terrorist charges. There were at least two resettlement requests to which the Antonio Saca presidency responded negatively.
Additionally, Mario Rivera, an official of El Salvador’s Ministry of External Relations, is cited in one of the cables, on the subject of Guantanamo. According to Rivera the country understood the necessity and respected the right of the U.S. to keep individuals detained in Guantanamo Bay.

American institutions and government have been captured by oligarchs and kleptocrats, who systematically set about stealing and looting what was once a great nation.

America can once again be a great nation, but we must take it back. NOBODY will do this for us. It will not be handled back to us by bought 'representatives'.

Wall Street is a huge contributor to the political machine, which in turns enables Wall Street's corporate plunder of our nation. Both the Democratic and Republican parties set the bankster agenda because of the MONEY. When we speak of 'taking the MONEY out of politics', we have no choice but to focus on the sources of the MONEY.

As a critical FIRST STEP, we call on Citizens to take the lead. Bring your friends and neighbors together to non-violently protest the tyranny of kleptocrats on Sept 17, 2011 (#Sept17).

We at usdayofrage.org DO NOT tolerate violence of any kind. US Day of Rage NYC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles stand is solidarity with each others' actions and endorse the planned actions of the NYC Assembly to #occupywallstreet on #Sept17.

• We will support and endorse the planned action of a NON-VIOLENT occupation of the financial district by the free and independent assembly of people, which is currently being planned by the NYC Assembly. We will post their website and plans as soon as they are live. The next assembly meeting is Saturday, August 27, 2011 at 5pm in Tompkins Square Park. Come down. Everyone is welcome.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.

>> The leader of India’s BJP party, L.K. Advani, demands that the Manmohan Singh government quit voluntarily and defends the authenticity of the information published by WikiLeaks.

>> A Pública reports on diplomatic cable revealing Bush administration's views on Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations, then headed by Celso Amorim, as anti-american.
During a meeting in 2005, U.S. Ambassador John Danilovich showed himself disappointed by Amorim’s refusal to see Hugo Chavez as threat.

>> Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed a cache of more than 3.000 unreleased submissions he took from WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks responded to these allegations with two statements, attributed to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, where it is suggested Daniel Domscheit-Berg and his wife Anke maintained contact with the FBI to whom they provided ‘helpful’ information.
Today, WikiLeaks specified the content of some of the destroyed documents in a series of tweets:

We can confirm that the DDB claimed destroyed data included a copy of the entire US no-fly list.

(…) five gigabytes from the Bank of America.
(…) the internals of around 20 neo-Nazi organizations.
(…) US intercept arrangements for over a hundred internet companies.

Authored by Nikolas Kozloff

From the Monroe Doctrine, which was aimed at curbing the encroachments of European powers in the nineteenth century, to Cold War foreign policy, designed to forestall the geopolitical machinations of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, Washington has stopped at nothing in its bid to maintain power and prestige within its own regional "back yard" of Latin America. But with all of those rivalries now a relic of the past, the U.S. is moving on to the next threat to its own hegemony: Iran. That, at least, is the impression I got from reading diplomatic cables which were recently released by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks.

For Washington, a great concern was that Iran might gain a strategic foothold in South America, recruiting key allies such as Brazil. Much to the chagrin of the Americans, Brazil under former president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva sought to carve out a more independent foreign policy which even embraced the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. By extending cooperation to Iran, Lula aimed to increase trade and boost collaboration on biotechnology and agriculture. In a surprising development, Lula even urged the west to drop its threats of punishment over Iran's nuclear program, a move which proved very reassuring to the politically isolated Ahmadinejad.

Image Credit - @exiledsurfer

On August 15, a group of online activists known as Anonymous showed that their words and deeds can indeed move beyond cyberspace. In response to BART's August 11th attempt to foil protest with a shutdown of their wireless communication system, Anonymous launched OpBART to protest these actions. Over that weekend, Anonymous lit up, defacing myBART.org and commandeering thousands of user names from the woefully insecure BART network. This is par for the course for Anonymous.

The events broke into the mainstream news. On Monday morning it was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers. Monday August 15th was X day for OpBART. With Twitter and social media facilitating the communication, those who care about free speech around the world watched to see if Anon could actually take their action to the streets.

Anonymous successfully carried out their intention. This was a rare pubic appearance that echoed some of their first actions against the Church of Scientology. Shawn Gaynor, writing for the San Francisco Bay Guardian noted how this protest was “the most civil of civil disturbances the city has seen surrounding the police brutality issue”.

Anonymous, who defaced BART’s external website now showed their face publicly as activists. Across time and space, struggles for justice from the past converged in SF with present action. Online activism led by the meme of Guy Fawkes masks from the film V for Vendetta emerged and entered the frame of conventional activism. People of all ages came. Ordinary people in nonviolent protest against BART violence and censorship showed solidarity with the group.