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.
The judgement on the extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden will be delivered tomorrow at the Royal Courts of Justice (London), at approximately 9:45 am GMT time.
A manifestation of support will take place outside the Court - starting at 9:00 am (more details here). Feel free to drop by: your presence there is important as a public affirmation of support toward Julian and WikiLeaks. So be there, and help raise awareness!
Remember, WikiLeaks needs you.
Following a press conference at the Frontline Club on the 24th October – where it was announced WikiLeaks was to temporarily suspend publishing activities to concentrate efforts on beating, through a major fundraising campaign in addition to legal action, the banking blockade that has deprived the publicly funded organization of 95% of its income - it is now much easier to donate to WikiLeaks, via SMS for instance, and you can also learn how to contribute with your skills as an internet user.
There’s nothing more frustrating than watching this endless cycle of stupidity unfold. Sometimes it’s just more dignified to face death rather than fight it.
To regular readers, it will sound like a tiresome cliché by now, but the fact that capitalism never solves its own crises was driven home once more last week by the outcome of the much-anticipated European Union crisis summit in Brussels on Wednesday. Yet again, European leaders managed to stave off an immediate catastrophe by buying themselves some extra time. But, yet again, the fundamental problems remain unresolved.
Here’s a list of points that European heads of state agreed upon:
And here’s a list of reasons why this is nothing but hot air:
Speakers in order of appearance:
A Canadian activist, she created Take the Square Canada and works with activists around the world to encourage and facilitate connection and communication for the revolution, both in Canada and around the world. She has been active in human rights and freedom of information for years.
Zak Yahya is a blogger at Lebanon Spring blog, where he writes about current affairs in Lebanon and Middle East. He writes in Wikileaks Central matters related to the Wikileaks cables, democracy and human rights issues. He focuses on the matters originating from the Levant - Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine and Iran. You can contact him on the Lebanon Spring blog or on twitter @TheZako
Naomi Colvin is a UK activist with UK Friends of Bradley Manning and the Occupy London movement. . Her website is here.
Alexa O'Brien. In February of this year she founded usdayofrage.org, where alongside her friends, she pushed the edge of digital social media for scalable organization of civil disobedience and non-violent protest. usdayofrage.org was instrumental in the traditional and digital organization of the original September 17 action in 5 American cities, including Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Oregon, and New York, and built trusted networks that spread #occupywallstreet virally across the United States.
Since January 2011, she has covered the WikiLeaks release of US State Department Cables, JTTF memoranda known as the ‘GTMO files’, and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen. She has interviewed preeminent US foreign policy expert on the Cambodia cables, and published hours of interview with former GTMO guards, detainees, defense lawyers, and human rights activists, as well as WikiLeaks media partners, including Andy Worthington, GTMO historian and author, and Atanas Tchobanov, Balkanleaks' spokesman and co-editor of Bivol.bg.
Listen to the conversation here.
"I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson
Earlier this month, a group within the Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) published a draft of the 99 Percent Declaration, which proposes solutions to economic inequality in the U.S. and announces a plan to organize a national convention to be held in Philadelphia on July 4, 2012. Still a work-in-progress, the Declaration calls for the election of delegates who would draft and vote on a non-partisan petition of grievances to be presented to the U.S. President, each member of Congress, the Supreme Court, and all federal candidates in the 2012 elections. If, warns the Declaration, the government does not act within one year to remedy its stated grievances, OWS will form a third political party to run in every Congressional seat in 2014 and 2016.
Let me say at the outset that from what I have seen of the occupation movement, it has becomes so dynamic, so energized and been met with such wide support among the people that nothing can defeat it if it doesn't defeat itself.
However I fear that it is on the verge of doing just that. There is big trouble in the Hard Block Cafe!
The Occupy Los Angeles General Assembly split into dueling factions Wednesday evening as a large number of occupiers who felt alienated by the highly structured, long and boring, but largely irrelevant GA , came in and took over the mike, overthrew the process, and made it an open mike session. The GA had been led by a facilitation committee that was far more concerned with process than content. This is a facilitation committee lead by a new core group. The original core group of facilitators that used the process to create Occupy Los Angeles have moved on to other areas. This may be "billed" as a leaderless movement but not only is there something to be said for leadership, there are a lot of advantages to consistent leadership, IMHO.
The original Wednesday GA started on the south side of city hall with the solar stage. After it was overthrown, the facilitators, for a while, reconvened their GA on north stairs before returning to the open mike crowd on the south stairs in the spirit of unity.
That there was a split at all is a sign of the deep divisions and serious problems that have cropped up at Occupy Los Angeles. About the same time this was going on, diagonally across First & Main from city hall in the LA Times building, they were posting this to their website:
Even in Los Angeles, where city leaders have greeted the demonstrators warmly, there are signs of protest fatigue and increasing anxiety about what happens next.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who earlier this month had ponchos distributed to rain-soaked Occupy L.A. protesters, said Wednesday that the encampment next to City Hall "cannot continue indefinitely."
Villaraigosa has instructed city officials to draft a plan for another location for the demonstration. He decided the camp could not stay after Los Angeles County health inspectors expressed worries about the cleanliness of the camp, and because of concerns about the condition of the lawn and trees.
The October 26 visit to the Philippines of US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Kurt Campbell should be viewed as significant, coming as it is 6 years after the Subic rape incident involving four US Marines and a Filipina. Of course the US would now argue that no rape ever took place and proof of this was the acquittal of the principal accused, Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, by an appeals court which reversed an earlier conviction by a lower court. The acquittal of course was surrounded by questionable circumstances.
But beyond the verdict of the courts, what the Subic rape incident did was expose the lopsidedness of the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement. The VFA, which was ratified by the Philippine Senate in 1999 (but not by the US Senate), sets the legal framework for the treatment of visiting US troops.
On November 1, 2005, a Filipina was allegedly raped inside a van and then left half-naked on the sidewalk in the former Subic US military base. Four visiting American soldiers were arrested. Their defense: only one of them engaged in consensual sex with the victim. The victim meanwhile said she was intoxicated and tried to resist the sexual advances of Smith. The other US soldiers cheered as the rape took place.
The Subic rape case triggered a controversial custody issue involving Smith, the US embassy and the Philippine government. While a Philippine court took jurisdiction over the rape case, Smith and his co-accused Staff Sergeant Chad Carpentier, Lance Corporal Keith Silkwood, and Lance Corporal Dominic Duplantis were placed under the custody of the US embassy in Manila because this was what the VFA supposedly mandated.
When a guilty verdict was issued by a Regional Trial Court, Smith was handed a life sentence and ordered detained at the Makati City Jail. His three other co-accused were acquitted and were immediately spirited out of the country back to Okinawa.
Listen to the conversation here
Speakers in order of appearance:
A Canadian activist, she created Take the Square Canada and works with activists around the world to encourage and facilitate connection and communication for the revolution, both in Canada and around the world. She has been active in human rights and freedom of information for years.
Alexa O'Brien. In February of this year she founded usdayofrage.org, where alongside her friends, she pushed the edge of digital social media for scalable organization of civil disobedience and non-violent protest. usdayofrage.org was instrumental in the traditional and digital organization of the original September 17 action in 5 American cities, including Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Oregon, and New York, and built trusted networks that spread #occupywallstreet virally across the United States.
The 1980's popularization of the computer and the birth of the Internet was a quantum shift in communication and an evolutionary step for human society. The Digital Revolution marked the latest stage of the information age. People in distant parts of the world now connect instantly and information flow has shrunk the world. One of the biggest changes recently is the interconnected immediacy of social networking. This is a communication revolution in itself.
The word revolution has roughly three different meanings. The first is political, signifying fundamental change in political institutions, such as the overthrow of a government and replacement with another form. The second describes a fundamental change in technology or society in general, such as the Industrial Revolution. The Digital Revolution brought a shift in how we communicate as well as a sea change in a vast array of technology. And lastly in astronomy, revolution is the orbiting of one heavenly body around another.
Until recently, the Digital Revolution has not been fundamentally linked to serious political change. Yet, it created the foundation for the ubiquitous social media that is now being linked with political revolution on a global scale.
Not speaking often publicly on general issues is a main attribute of the top leadership in the Syrian Baathist regime. They rarely allow themselves to be faced and challenged by the media. The regime tends to convey its messages via different proxies and mouthpieces who are regime-linked. These unofficial spokespeople meet foreign officials or media to express the official line.
Take for example the Syrian uprising which is seven months old now. Rarely has a Syrian official has showed up in any TV show since the 'troubles' started in Syria; nothing like an interior minister, sub-minister or even a spokesman. The task is usually done by 'analysts', 'academics' or 'strategists' who are actually fiercer than the regime itself in expressing the official line. A lot of these names have become infamous now as they have been hosted almost full-time on satellite channels like AlArabiya and AlJazeera. Dr. Taleb Ibrahim is one of these. Of the few times the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem spoke to the media for example, they were in press conference type meetings rather than debate talk show types. Still, he managed to wipe out new countries when he spoke.
Saurday was the biggest day yet at Occupy Los Angeles as it began its third week. Around noon, between 10,000 – 15,000 people, according to official LAPD estimates, marched from Pershing Sq. through the financial district and then to the occupation site at city hall. With so many protesters, the police closed the streets for the march, which was very spirited with people from all over Southern California and what is more important a mix of people that was incredibly representative of South California. As this is not radio, I will let the 14 pictures in the slideshow below the fold speak for themselves.
The march ended at Occupy Los Angeles which now involves over 300 tents occupying almost of the grassy areas around city hall. Thousand of people stayed around for the celebration, dancing music, committee meetings, film screenings, yoga and more.
As city hall is closed on Saturday, we had the run of the place. The north, west and south stairs operated as three stages all afternoon and into the night. For the afternoon, Spring St. on the west side of city hall was blocked off to traffic so that people could rally there. A portable stage and sound system was set up in the middle of the street and that was the main forum for post march speakers and musicians.
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- attributed to Thomas Jefferson
Submitted by Take the Square
NEWS DATABASE
On the 15th there will be protests in almost 1 thousand cities worldwide. The amount of information that will be generated on the Internet is huge, which is why everyone has to contribute in order to create a crowd-sourced database. This will make it easier for investigators to analyze information later. This (http://bit.ly/n4XiJ0 ) is a link to an interactive document where you can post links to news pieces, photos, videos or your own report.
SPREADING AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
Check http://15october.net/spread-it/ for banners, posters and fliers to print and share on the net. Be active in your own social media accounts and blogs, help sharing information: everyone is a journalist, be the media.
Follow on Facebook http://facebook.com/15octobernet
The occupation at Wall Street received good news this morning: after spending the night preparing for eviction, the clean-up order was postponed.
A spectacular piece of news reached the Wall Street occupation on Friday morning: the private owner of Zuccotti Park, which has been the homebase of the movement since the occupation began on September 17, decided to postpone a scheduled cleaning operation of the square. Protesters, who had been bracing for an NYPD-inflicted bloodbath all night, let off an ecstatic cheer upon receiving the news.
Many protesters believe the planned cleaning operation was just a ploy to kick protesters out of the park. If they had left, they would not have been allowed to return with sleeping bags and other camping gear, presumably for feigned reasons of public health and sanitation. In order to counter any claims about the camp’s hygienic situation, the protesters spent most of the night cleaning and tidying up the square.
The private owners of the park, Brookfield Properties, released a statement saying they believed an arrangement could be made with the protesters — and that they were simply too many to be safely removed. Upon hearing the news of the clear-up order, 5,000 protesters had flocked into Zuccotti Park — renamed Liberty Square by the movement — to defend it in case of eviction. All night, debates were held and instructions given on how to peacefully resist eviction.
Responding belatedly to my letter of 2011/07/21, the Attorney General Robert McClelland (and therefore the Australian government) have made it clear (yet again) that the David Hicks matter and torture allegations is something to make pious platitudes about but otherwise, they have no desire to do anything else.
Here is the letter:
Note the following six points in summary form, made by McClelland's office:
The past 17th of September the world assisted almost unknowingly to the first taste of the new global protest of our time. Initially this was the date marked as the beginning of the Occupy Wall St. movement (now a nationwide phenomenon), however it also served to launch an international campaign of protests in front of local banks and stock exchanges dubbed as 'Antibanks Day'. For the first time, the rising global civil movement, based on democratic assemblies and structured around an ever-growing network of activists, tested its capacity to rally people worldwide and not only in a national framework. They created task-forces for media strategies, both online and offline, set up independent live-streams and coordinated globally for spreading information. Consequently, the start of Occupy Wall Street was used as an excuse by activists everywhere to prepare for the worldwide protest on October 15th, which will be the consolidation of this structure, and will set the standard for it's future success or failure.
Watch closely as a policeman in civilian clothing kicks an 18 year old girl in the face while handcuffed, in a clear violation of human rights agreements. Later he elbows her hard on the face, slamming her to the floor. This is only an extract of the full video, which will be published later
The march of the indignants arrived in Brussels on the 7th of October, after over two months of walking. Hundreds of protesters walked from Madrid, Paris and parts of Germany to the European parliament to demand a more participatory democracy and greater equality. Since arriving in Brussels the indignant movement has faced continued police repression and brutality. On October the 8th, 48 people were arrested while peacefully protesting in the central park. Yet authorities were unable to place any charges and all were released 12 hours later.
Contradicting the trend in New York, Boston, Washington, DC and other cities where the growing occupation movement has been met by official hostility and police violence, today, on the twelfth day of the people's encampment at Los Angeles city hall in opposition to the domination of the big banks and in support of Occupy Wall St., the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution to promote responsible banking by the City of Los Angeles and in support of Occupy Los Angeles.
The resolution with the title "First Amendment Rights / Occupy Los Angeles / Responsible Banking Measure" was sponsored by Richard Alarcon and Bill Rosendahl and was seconded by five other councilpersons, virtually assuring it of passage.
The agenda item for this read as follows:
09-0234-S1
CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION (ALARCON - ROSENDAHL - ET AL.) relative to the City's position to support the First Amendment Rights carried out by “Occupy Los Angeles” and addressing concerns regarding the Responsible Banking measure.
Recommendation for Council action, SUBJECT TO THE CONCURRENCE OF THE MAYOR: ADOPT the accompanying RESOLUTION to SUPPORT the continuation of the peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment Rights carried out by "Occupy Los Angeles" and URGE the City Departments responsible for completing the implementation plan associated with the Responsible Banking measure (Council file No. 09-0234) that was approved by the Council on March 5, 2010, which would address some of the concerns of the "Occupy Los Angeles" demonstrators by demanding accountability and results from the Banks we invest taxpayer dollars in, to bring the Responsible Banking measure for a final vote to the Council by October 28, 2011
After dozens of public comments by members of Occupy LA including me and other citizens, the endorsement of many City Counclpersons, and the haggling over the date for the final vote on the banking measure, the council passed the resolution by a vote of 11 to 0 with a couple members abstaining.
By Franco Berardi and Geert Lovink
October 2011. The fight opposing financial dictatorship is erupting.
The so-called ‘financial markets’ and their cynical services are destroying the very foundations of social civilization. The legacy of the postwar compromise between the working class and progressive bourgeoisie has all but disappeared. Neoliberal policies are cutting back education and the public health system and is cancelling the right to a salary and a pension. The outcome will be impoverishment of large parts of the population, a growing precarity of labor conditions (freelance, short-term contracts, periods of unemployment) and daily humiliation of workers. The yet to be seen effect of the financial crisis will be violence, as people conjure up scapegoats in order to vent their rage. Ethnic cleansing, civil war, obliteration of democracy. This is a system we call financial Nazism: FINAZISM.
Right now people are fighting back in many places, and in many ways. Occupy Wall Street inspired a mass mobilization in New York that is extending across the USA every day. In Greece workers and students are squatting Syntagma square and protesting against the blackmail by the European Central Bank, which is devastating the country. Cairo, Madrid, Tel Aviv, the list of the ‘movements of the squares’ is proliferating. On October 15 cities across the globe will amass with people protesting against the systemic robbery.
Movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis and Jason Statham are actually in Bulgaria for the shooting of the "The Expendables 2" at the Nu Boyana Film Studios.
Bodyguard services are provided by a Bulgarian security firm connected to the most powerful local organized crime group TIM, according to secret cables sent from the US Embassy in Sofia and published by Wikileaks.
Pictures taken during Schwarzenegger's arrival at the Sofia International Airport, published in Bulgarian media, show a Mercedes SUV, waiting for the actor, with license plate C4401XA, registered to a company owned by the Varna-based TIM and commonly used by the TIM boss Ivo Kamenov. According to unconfirmed reports, the SUV is armored to the 7b level, which is very rare in Bulgaria.
Another picture portrays kick boxer Todor Todorov standing close to Schwarzenegger. Todorov is a competitor of the TIM sports club and a bodyguard, employed by the Sark Group company, founded in 2004 by the former chief of security of TIM boss Marin Mitev.
The security activities of TIM are spread among several firms with the most popular one being TIM EOOD, offering VIP security services in Bulgaria and abroad, according to the official internet page tim.bg.
The Nu Boyana studios, contacted by bivol.bg, have declined giving information about the company providing security for Hollywood stars, shooting in Sofia, and in particular for Schwarzenegger.
TIM - "The up-and-coming star of Bulgarian organized crime"
At 1:30 this morning police in full riot gear attacked the participants of Occupy Boston, which had peacefully gathered on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Without any regard for the protester's constitutional rights, the Boston Police Department made no distinction between protesters, medics, or legal observers, arresting legal observer Ursula Levelt, who serves on the steering committee for the National Lawyers Guild, as well as four medics attempting to care for the injured.
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