This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories relating directly to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.

News

• Cables published by WikiLeaks reveal that the US State Department placed pressure on Spanish authorities to silence Baltasar Garzon, the judge who, in 1998, ordered the arrest and extradition of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
  Due to pressure from the Obama administration, Garzon was removed from the Bush 6 case and forced to drop investigation into:
  
  
  - the death of a Spanish reporter who was killed by US shelling in Baghdad;

  - allegations by Spanish Guantanamo detainees of being tortured;

  - use of Spanish bases for CIA “rendition” flights.
  
  
  Judge Baltasar Garzon himself faces trial, beginning January 17, on “corruption charges”. The most serious charge he is facing (exceeding authority) relates to an order issued, at the request of families, to exhume the remains of victims assassinated during the Franco regime. More than 200 international organizations condemn prosecution against him.
  [Source: Dissident Voice]

”Out of Africa always comes something new” wrote the Roman historian Pliny, (23-79 A.D.) With Mummar Qaddafi gone from Libyan, this old adage will almost certainly gain new meaning because Qaddafi was not only the dictator who ruled Libya with the whip for 40 years, he was a major power in African affairs. He sought to unify Africa under his leadership and saw himself as "King of all the African tribes." Well, with the kickoff of Occupy Nigeria, we are seeing something new in Africa today.

Uploaded by AnonymousNigeria on January 9, 2012
Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, 160 million people or 1 in 6 Africans live in Nigeria, so any movement there is bound to have a big impact on the whole continent. Could this have anything to do with Qaddafi's recent demise and the success of the revolution in Libya? These are the main questions I wish to touch upon in this article. But first a quick update for those that have not been glued to news out of Africa all day.

3 people were killed and at least another 20 were injured as Nigerian state security used tear gas and rubber bullets and finally resorted to live ammunition in attempts to suppress mass protests in Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria. Except for the rallies, the streets were eerily empty, and shops and businesses closed as most of the country was brought to a grinding halt by a nationwide general strike which its organizers have named "Occupy Nigeria."

This article is a continuation of the ideas begun in A proposal for governance in the post 2011 world

Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. - Wikipedia

Competition, collaboration and stigmergy

The internet has, in a few short years, become celebrated for the incredible success of its mass collaborative efforts, most of which were actually not produced by collaboration but by stigmergy. Stigmergy, a far more effective means of handling large group efforts, is also the best hope for success in a new governing system. This proposal has already suggested that new governance be based on systems, not land mass, and that governance be by user groups, not elected officials. Stigmergy is the most effective way for those user groups to govern systems.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories relating directly to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.

News

• Only 1300 new members needed before activist network Friends of WikiLeaks fully launches.

• In less than 20 hours, the auction for WikiLeaks Truck will close. Current bid is US $7.600.00.

• L’Espresso journalist Stefania Maurizi describes, in a series of tweets her experience meeting Julian Assange to receive italian cables in January 2011 and, prior to that, the Afghan war Logs, right after Julian Assange left Sweden in 2010. Recommended reading, as the misconception Julian Assange fled Sweden to escape interrogation is dispelled. In fact, he remained in the country for over a month to answer allegations against him, yet he was not called to be interrogated. He was instead given permission to travel abroad: “Assange was NOT trying to avoid questioning in Sweden, we had an appointment in Berlin, where I was supposed to get the Afghan War Logs”, Stefania Maurizi writes.

• Stainless Steel Rat, a controversial Australian play consisting of a fictional plot vaguely inspired by reports on Julian Assange’s life, was target of so much criticism its name and dialogue had to be modified. Since 14 December, the play now known as Man in the Middle has gone through 14 drafts.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories relating directly to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.

News

• WikiLeaks has been under financial blockade for 400 days. Consider making a donation so its work can continue.

• On twitter, WikiLeaks linked to the source document showing Apple and Blackberry backdoors were used by Indian Military Intelligence to intercept communications of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) on issues that are “of great value to Indian industry”.
  The document is part of WikiLeaks’ Spy Files release.

• Twitter, Facebook, Google and five other corporations endorse online piracy bill OPEN, an alternative to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), that would also authorize financial embargo of websites suspected of copyright infrigement by payment processors. Banking blockades identical to that unlawfully imposed on WikiLeaks could, under these bills, become the norm. [via The Hill]

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories relating directly to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.

News

• In Denmark, a scandal over the transfer of Iraqi prisoners by Danish forces who knew the prisoners would be tortured at the hands of Iraq authorities threatens to implicate the current Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Prime Minister of Denmark. The defense ministry in his government is now being charged with withholding his knowledge of Iraqi torture from legislators.
  This information first became known in 2010, when WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs, which contained a memo indicating that prisoners were handed over to Abu Ghraib by Danish soldiers even after an inquiry by "a Danish Defence Ministry official" had confirmed torture took place in the facility.
  truthout links to a similar story revealed in the Iraq War Logs: US turned over captives to Iraqi torture squads.

• Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing was scripted in advance: Politico released the script to the pretrial, which lays out statements for the Investigating Officer (judge) and Prosecution, and states it was generally adhered to.

News

Request to keep WikiLeaks backers' private Twitter data from US Prosecutors denied

• Yesterday, WikiLeaks backers Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp and Birgitta Jonsdottir lost a bid to keep their private Twitter data from being handed over to US prosecutors, in the context of a Grand Jury criminal investigation on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
  According to American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Aden Fine, Birgitta Jonsdottir’s representative, his client may consider asking the appeals court to delay turning over the data.

‘War on The Internet’, panel with Jacob Appelbaum

• The panel will take place in Melbourne, on January 21 (Trades Hall Melbourne cnr Victoria & Lygon, at 3PM).

This article is a continuation of the ideas begun in A proposal for governance in the post 2011 world

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world. - Mary Wollstonecraft

An overriding concern of most people participating in the 2011 revolution has been the financial system. From the September 17 protests against the financial institutions and the symbolism of Occupy Wall Street to the widespread discussion of alternative currencies, money has received more air time than even human rights and war. Indeed, the current human rights atrocities and endless wars did not cause the revolution – it was the unfairness of the economic systems (starting with the fining of a fruitseller in Tunisia) which have been the driving force behind the 2011 protests.

With all of this attention, it would be easy to assume that financial systems are a very important part of any future society. But are they? Before we discuss alternative systems or how to repair our current system, we need to look at why we need a financial system at all. If we define the function of our financial systems, form should follow easily, be it community currency, barter, p2p digital, resource based or other.

The current system

News

The implications of SOPA, NDAA and mass telecommunication surveillance

• In an article published in Digital Trends, Geoff Duncan analyses the National Defense Authorization Act, proposed copyright bill SOPA and mass telecommunication surveillance. He asks the question: Will 2012 end up resembling George Orwell’s novel 1984?
  The article also focuses on the link between NDAA and the possibility the work of WikiLeaks and Anonymous might, in the future, constitute terrorist activity:

  “This may not seem to have anything to do with the Internet”, he writes of the NDAA, “until you think about groups like Anonymous and Wikileaks. Could Anonymous (or groups within Anonymous) attacking credit card operators, the threatening the NYSE, law enforcement organizations, or other organizations constitute terrorist activity? Similarly, would Wikileaks’ publication of classified U.S. diplomatic cables constitute terrorist activity? Suddenly, everyday Internet users speaking up in support of groups like Anonymous and Wikileaks might find themselves accused of aiding and facilitating terrorists. Similarly, if U.S. authorities decide these or similar groups’ activities constitute terrorism, members or alleged members might find themselves shipped to Guantanamo. No trial, no process, no appeal.”

Day of Action Against Guantanamo

News

Activists take legal action over fabricated Embassy cable

• In Egypt, several activists have filed legal action against newspaper Al-Wafd over the publication of a translation of a diplomatic cable originally published by WikiLeaks, to which names of activists not present in the original document were added, so as to make it appear these specific people had received “secret funds” from the United States.
  Original document published by WikiLeaks: 08CAIRO941

Interview with creator of the play 'The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning'

• In an interview about the play that will be staged in April at a school once attended by Bradley Manning in Wales, playwright Tim Price expressed admiration for the alleged whistleblower:

Submitted by Mark Barrett. This work was previously published on RightToWork.org

Image credit www.whiteflag.info

In the spirit of a Popular Assembly, the Right to Work Campaign have kindly offered me the opportunity to blog about the Spanish Real Democracy Movement. As part of this, I would like to put forward a personal view on the future of work in a really democratic society. Hopefully this will stimulate some debate!

In an advanced society liberating, enjoyable and well-rewarded work should be available to everyone. Under neo-liberalism however, workers get caught between an unstable, precarious (and often unfulfilling) job market on the one hand, and the dole queue on the other. With a third ‘option’ the capitalist sop, a coercive form of employment known in the UK as workfare.

I argued in 2009, as I do now that after the real democracy revolution there will be an enormous liberation in the world of work from the present model. The big clue as to how it will look can be found in the 15M movement’s organisational model, Popular Assemblies. In Spain these are now taking root at the neighbourhood level and I think this illustrates how, in its decision-making the 15M movement embraces the ideal of a decentralised democratic constitution. This is important because ‘real democracy’ – the inclusion of everyone in political-economic decision-making as equals, the politics of the common - can surely only come about when we recalibrate social organisation to the local, human-scale, community base.

News

• WikiLeaks tweeted the following, about a project in course: "Interviewing revolutionaries & power insiders on plans & futures, utopian vs dystopian-suggest a name #worldtomorrow"

• The WikiLeaks Truck is for sale, so we can have more WikiLeaks trucks around the world. Artist Clark Stoeckley, the owner, plans to expand the project into a global fleet of WikiLeaks trucks. More information at @WikiLeaksTruck.

• In response to WikiLeaks, lawyer Peter Kemp determines Julian Assange is able to run for Australian Senate from house arrest in England, reflects on the policy of a hypothetical WikiLeaks party: wlcentral.org/node/2401

2011 ended with the alarming approval of the National Defense Authorization Act by the US Congress, which places ultimate authority on the President of the United States to decide on the indefinite military detention of terrorism suspects worldwide. The bill was signed on New Year’s Eve, a festive occasion, its strategic timing reminiscent of the date set for Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing, which also took place during last year’s holiday season.

As of the 1st of 2012:

UPDATE 18th March 2012 AEST 14.48: Due to gross misrepresentations by the main stream media since Wikileaks announced on 16/17 March 2012 Julian Assange's candidacy for the next Australian Senate elections, it has to be noted that the article below was one written completely and independently of Wikileaks, was written and posted at WL Central as a result only of a general tweet from Wikileaks seeking information. The article represents the independent legal opinion/recitation of Australian law and following, the independent political opinion of the writer in relation to a candidacy of Julian Assange for the Australian Senate.

The writer and WLC simply request that the main stream media cease and desist from those gross misrepresentations (and grasp one essential fact by the way: WLC is not WL). Link to the miscreant msm:

http://wlcentral.org/node/2508

On Christmas day 2011 @Wikileaks posted a most intriguing question on twitter.

Lawyers traditionally, rarely give free legal advice off the cuff in unfamiliar areas without 'due diligence' research. One case of that was the wrong investment advice given at a social function and a lawsuit that followed - moral, that's why you should never ask a lawyer at a party for free advice, you might have to sue - however, on this occasion the question was so intriguing, a quick check of the Commonwealth's Electoral Act section 163 and section 42/43 of the constitution revealed some relatively simple law:

TIME Magazine chose the Protester as 2011 person of the year. This was the year of people’s uprising. All around the globe, the legitimacy of governance was questioned and challenged. The critical agents for a new civil society are on the rise. It is not about a single person, group or ideology, but the empowerment of ordinary people around the world; Egyptians and Tunisians who risk their lives for the betterment of society; Occupiers in New York going viral around the globe and hackers, free information advocates, online collectives like Anonymous and LulzSec, tirelessly working to bring checks and balance to the corruption of power.

A once apathetic and cynical youth is rising to the occasion. The civic arena that has been taken over by commercial interests is bypassed by a growing segment of the populace in favor of this new model that moves beyond the nation-state and the facade of modern representative Democracy.

The Arab Spring was noted as being a social media-led revolution. Anonymous is a model of social creativity that is a phenomenon of individual action in union (or legion, as they would say) around a shared idea. Occupiers swarm cities together through the uniting values of the 99%. The protagonists of this blossoming crowd-sourced civic life are claiming power as active agents in their own lives. This new movement reminds me of the complex social organization of the bees.

Submitted by Mark Barret

Image credit www.whiteflag.info

Asking this question raises profound questions about sovereignty, representation and justice. In an age characterised by the sovereignty of the nation-state, since the Treaty of Westphalia, globalisation has brought about the rise of the new, unaccountable king, in the form of global bond markets and other undemocratic world institutions. By contrast the Occupy/15M movement recognises the need to reformulate political economy at local, national and global levels, and to put it under people's control.

The first principle of the global movement is therefore the sovereignty of each people's assembly, within certain constitutional parameters. These parameters can be loosely defined with common slogans like "think global, act local", "inclusivity, equality, everyone's voice counts", "they don't represent us, and I do not represent anyone but myself". In short, the assembly is a new political form to bring about a people powered globalisation and democratise all spheres of life.

Talking about global governance is a huge and complex issue, but with the above first principle in place it is possible to sketch out how the process of change, driven by the assemblies might look in practice. First, because we recognise the nation state itself is problematic, and second because of our general belief in participatory democracy and local, decentralised community sovereignty (in Spain the assemblies decentralised down to the neighbourhood level quite rapidly) it is quite likely that the assemblies movement will aim to transform the domestic state / constitution.

"There is nothing more difficult to manage, or more doubtful of success, or more dangerous to handle than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things. For the innovator has enemies in all those who are doing well under the old order, and he has only lukewarm defenders in all those who would do well under the new order. ...

"It is necessary, however ... to determine whether these innovators are standing on their own or depend on others; that is, whether they have to beg or are able to use force in order to conduct their affairs. In the first case they always end up badly and do not accomplish anything, but when they depend on their own resources and are able to use force, then they are rarely in danger. From this comes the fact that all armed prophets have been victorious and the unarmed ones have come to ruin. For ... people are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded. And therefore, it is necessary to arrange things so that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Submitted by Anna Harris

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! It is obvious we are headed for disaster unless we change course drastically, and we don't have a lot of time. A project is being discussed internationally in the Occupy movement - Global Strike May 2012. What we are proposing is a continuous strike, a permanent withdrawal from the current system, a signal for all those who feel their work to be meaningless and unsatisfying, to switch to alternative means which are beneficial to the whole community, to support themselves and their families. In order to make this feasible this alternative system needs to be up and running by May 2012. Outrageous! Impossible! I agree with you. Nevertheless it has to happen if we are serious about moving from this morally bankrupt and physically damaging path we are on, to a sustainable system that puts people before profit. Join us on Take the Squares Network https://n-1.cc/pg/groups/1010883/15m-global-strike/. and please pass around to friends and colleagues.

From n-1:

Every day the trade unions, students, and retirees are more and more mobilized for transnational coordinated strikes against the budget cuts and financial dictatorships.

In Europe and the United States, millions of people are taking to the streets to defend public services and denounce the lack of democracy and austerity plans.

Ms Marsh wrote this proposal on the 24th of December, regarding her thoughts on the organisation of political and economic systems "post-NDAA", or National Defence Authorisation Act. As a brief aside, the NDAA is the US military's appropriations bill, but with benefits. It allows for indefinite military detainment, and the converting of the United States proper into a 'front' in the 'Global War on Terror'.

In my opinion, the core of Ms Marsh's proposal is a reaction to the problem of centralisation. This problem takes many forms, but for my purposes I believe Ms Marsh was focused on just two facets: Economy and political centralisation. An example of each facet, respectively, is global corporate Capitalism and the nation-state.

Reading Ms Marsh propose with this in mind, I think, lends greater weight to her critique and solutions. The adage of 'live local, think global' comes to mind. In essence, the predominance of economic and political organisation will occur within only about two or three degrees of separation, in context of affinity groups of such a size which are capable of providing self-oversight.

Here we run head-long into the nation-state and its wealth of problems. A small piece of semantics, however, as this is a term which needs to be brought back to its true definition: A State composed of one Nation, as in a group of people who share a common identity. Hence the concept of 'national identity', as part of the defining characteristic of a nation-state.

Originally posted on September 12, 2010 reposted in celebration and gratitude for all that has happened in the 15 1/2 months since. Wishing us all great progress in 2012.

Image credit DaliRau

About this huge, world wide war that most of the population doesn’t seem to have realized we are in yet. An elementary overview.

What war?

The military industrial complex against the anonymous cloud, with an ignorant populace as the prize.

This is a war about information, governance, trade, ownership, personal and environmental health … in short, everything. The establishment is the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) . You know them, these are your banks, the government you elected, the big businesses, the lackey media and the organized crime. You know them, maybe you trust them, you may have started feeling a little, or more than a little, uneasy about them in the past decade or several.

The revolutionaries are the Anonymous Cloud. You know them too. These are the people who have caused every successful revolution the world has ever seen. They have been likened to a flock of birds, a group of individuals who happen to decide all at the same time to head in the same direction. Some split off, in groups or singly, some are shot, but the flock will continue. If the entire flock is captured, a new flock will form. The idea is the thing, and if the idea is right it will survive.