2011-10-04 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

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

Today is the fifth birthday of WikiLeaks.org! 5 years of crushing bastards a message on the official @wikileaks twitter account reads.

The domain was created on the 4th October 2006, at 05:54:19 UTC.

Founder Julian Assange has now spent a total of 301 days under house arrest without charge, an electronic bracelet that monitors all his movements attached to his ankle.
A decision on his extradition appeal is expected soon, the High Court of London having resumed its activity monday after a period of vacation.

Bradley Manning has now spent 497 days under pre-trial detention.

Upcoming WikiLeaks events, with the participation of Julian Assange or Kristinn Hrafnsson are listed below:

* Julian Assange will speak at the New Media Order Conference 2011, Istanbul (live from England), on the 5th October (tomorrow).

* On Saturday, the 8th October, an Antiwar Assembly will take place in Trafalgar Square, London, to protest the war in Afghanistan. Julian Assange is among the speakers which also include Jemima Khan, John Pilger, Peter Tatchell...

* Both Julian Assange and Kristinn Hrafnsson are to speak at the 67th General Assembly of Inter-American Press Society (SIP), 14-18 October, in Lima (Peru).

* 1º Encontro Internacional de Blogueiros Progressistas, Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil), 28-30 October will have the presence of Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Selected recent Cablegate press coverage:

- "A diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the Clean Development Mechanism projects in India should not have been certified because they did not reduce emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment." via Scientific American

- Bangladesh: Extra-judicial killings in the name of ‘crossfire’ or ‘encounter’ by Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) referred to as "necessary, short-term expedient" by former second-in-command of Rab, Chowdhury Fazlul Bari, during a conversation with US officials in June 2005.

- According to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Nelson Mandela advised Robert Mugabe to step down in 2007 as a way of preserving his 'liberation war legacy', or run the risk of being disgraced like Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who later faced criminal trials. via All Africa

- Former Al Jazeera director, Wadah Khanfar, commenting on his sudden resignation in a recent interview : "The Wikileaks report has nothing to do with my resignation."

And in other news,
- Artist and activist Clark Stoeckley’s "WikiLeaks Truck" (a non-official vehicle decorated to raise awareness and elicit reactions to the work of WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning’s detention) was pulled over and searched during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

- On September 30, Julian Assange addressed the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, via satellite, on the topic WikiLeaks Has Not Gone Far Enough. Although a video of Julian’s speech and the Q&A session that followed was not released, audio of the event was recorded by WikiLeaks supporter @NOH8ER (of which a full transcript is in the making) and a write-up was put together as well.
Additionally, there are two chirpstories available with selected updates that were live tweeted - 1 , 2 - as well as a mainstream press report containing a few important quotes from the evening:

"At the moment, WikiLeaks is a rather big boat with a lot of torpedo holes in it that has taken water in and is drifting along and we're doing our best to keep it afloat."
"We have only just begun. We have put into that historic record less than one-thousandth of the series of information that is concealed that needs to be there."

''Until we know ourselves, and until we know the civilisation we are working in, we cannot possibly address the problems of our civilisation.''

"(…)even if WikiLeaks is destroyed, other people have been inspired by our work and they will continue to carry the flame."

Referring to the release of the full Cablegate documents, Julian Assange commented:

"It can't be called a dump - dump is what you do to garbage. This is a treasure."