Israel

WikiLeaks News:

• The Australian Government recently renewed its attacks against WikiLeaks by condemning the organization as "reckless, irresponsible and potentially dangerous" as well as delaying the release of Australian diplomatic cables on Julian Assange until his extradition case has been decided.

• New laws have passed in Australia which make it difficult for organizations like WikiLeaks to operate, including an extradition law which makes it easier for foreign governments to request extradition of Australians and a new spying law which broadens ASIO's reach.

• BBC aired the second episode of its documentary "WikiLeaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower."
  

Image from WikiLeaks

• WikiLeaks continues to release more G.I. Files daily. Here is the latest coverage:
  • Stratfor sees New Zealand as holding little geopolitical importance.
  • Mossad assisted their Saudi counterparts with intelligence on Iran
  • Assad's mother is disappointed by his failures as Syrian President
  • Papua New Guinea's new PM, Peter O'Neill, is only interested in money
  • Stratfor believes Turkey's PM Erdogan has two years to live

Image from WikiLeaks

• The G.I. Files have been dominating the headlines. Here are some highlights:
  • Coca-Cola contracted Stratfor to spy on PETA
  • Stratfor monitored Bhopal activists, including The Yes Men
  • Osama bin Laden was in routine contact with Pakistan's spy agency
  • Stratfor discovered Israel already destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities
  • A Homeland Security

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.

Last week's arrests of a dozen alleged CIA agents in Iran threw a spotlight on long-standing, covert U.S.-Israeli actions in the Islamic republic -- including purported involvement by the CIA and Mossad in the recent killings of Iranian nuclear scientists. Though enduring, the collaboration between Western and Israeli intelligence agencies in intelligence and assassination operations reveals a relationship of cooperation and distrust.

The Mossad (Hebrew for "institution") is Israel's main intelligence agency. According to the Global Security site, Mossad also oversees "covert action and counterterrorism"; its operations are widely held to include targeted killings. At the time of its founding, the Mossad's motto was the biblical quote "By way of deception thou shalt make war." The motto was later changed to a different Proverbs passage: "Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety." Sources refer variously to the Mossad's international assassination unit as "Metsada," "Caesarea," or "Kidon" ("Kidon" is Hebrew for "bayonet"). Rafi Eitan, a former director of Mossad operations, compared its assassins to "the official hangman or the doctor on Death Row who administers the lethal injection. We are simply fulfilling a sentence sanctioned by the prime minister of the day."

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.

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.

Syria:

• In Latakia, warships and tanks open fire killing at least 21 civilians and injuring many others in two residential districts of its city. Article describing carnage
• Activists and the Local Co-ordination Committee (LCC) have reported this assault continuing into Sunday, with a curfew ordered on the residents. Information is sketchy and at times hard to verify because Syrian authorities have expelled most independent journalists since the five-month-old uprising against Assad began.
• A local resident reported to Reuters news service, "I can see the silhouettes of two grey vessels. They are firing their guns and the impact is landing on al-Ramel al-Filistini and al-Shaab neighbourhoods."
• Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets this weekend across the country in fresh protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. This video shows some of the protests.

Israel

• The effects of Israel's recent economic "Boom" for some, seems not to be benefiting the middle and lower clases, so say the protestors that have held demonstrations all over the country in recent months.
• Newspapers said these are some of the largest nationwide protests ever seen in Israel over social issues.
• Over 20 thousand protestors turned up at Be’er Sheva, but so wide spread is the discontent, that many more were expected to show. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday pledged to establish a task force to examine economic reforms and hear the demands of the protesters.

Syria:

• The Local Co-ordination Committees say 7-8 people have been killed across Syria so far today: 4 in Homs, 1 in Hama, 1 in Daraya and 1 or 2 in Latakia. Shooting continues.
• This video reportedly shows Bashar al Assad's picture taken down and destroyed at Syrian Airlines international sites.
• Friday's death toll is being reported as 23.
• This video shows a funeral in Douma, where five people, including a young woman, were reported killed by government forces on Friday. The crowd is being estimated at "tens of thousands" by Al Jazeera.
• Thousands are still being arrested.
• Tanks entered Lataika and heavy artillery was being reported there.
• Turkey isn’t ruling out international intervention in Syria if the Bashar al-Assad regime doesn’t stop using violence against its own people, a Turkish official told the Hürriyet Daily News on Friday.

On the 1st of August 2008 Syrian General Muhammad Suleiman, who also bore the title of Special Presidential Advisor for Arms Procurement and Strategic Weapons for President Bashar al-Assad, was murdered in highly mysterious circumstances. General Suleiman was shot three times in the head, neck and stomach at his home in the exclusive Rimal al-Zahabieh resort in the Mediterranean city of Tartous. It was speculated then that the shots came from a sniper located on a boat, which explained how the top level security forces surrounding Suleiman were avoided. At this time relations between Syria and Israel were at their worst and the talk of war was in the air, particularly due to Syria’s intent on upgrading its nuclear and chemical weapons facilities, a strategy headed by Suleiman. Therefore, most of the international press, most notably The Sunday Times, stated as a fact that it was Israeli intelligence agency Mossad who was to blame.

An inside job

Recent cables published by Wikileaks, however, shed a new light on the assassination, revealing a very delicate multi-lateral diplomatic situation. The fact that this information came from the U.S. embassy in Paris is particularly revealing. In cable #08PARIS1717 Ambassador Stapleton, says that Boris Boillon, adviser at the French presidency, asserted to him that “the killing seemed to be some sort of inside job”.

Largest rally in Israeli history sees four percent of the population out in the streets — that would be 12 million people in the streets of the US! (Photo: ActiveStills)

The Israeli social justice movement has just gone into orbit and exploded into previously unchartered territories. According to police estimates (which tend to be conservative), 300,000 protesters took to the streets across the country in what constitutes the largest-ever protest in the country’s history. And still no coverage in the mainstream media!

The stellar growth of the J14 movement, which was sparked when a young Israeli woman named Daphni Leef pitched a tent in Tel Aviv three weeks ago to protest against the unaffordable cost of housing in the country, has put immense pressure on the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In just three weeks, the Prime Minister has seen his approval rating tumble nearly 20 percent, to a dismal 32 percent.

The protests, while feeding on the widespread anger in the middle class about the unbearable cost of living, have since matured to take up a number of other progressive issues — and have now morphed into a full-blown social justice movement, contesting the free-market zealotry of Benjamin Netanyahu and the crony capitalist system that lurks behind the neoliberal edifice his government is trying to keep intact.

Flotilla 101 Crew on the occupation of Spanish Embassy in Athens from Wikileaks World on Vimeo.

The fight enroute to Gaza between the worldwide volunteers and the governments of Israel, the United States and Greece—has been portrayed from two opposite sides, yes, but opposite in a political and moral compass completely broken: on one side, the flotilla argues the desperate need of help and hope with which the Gazans live every day while, on the other side, the authorities trying to block the flotilla have accused it of being “ready to kill Israeli soldiers” or—more rhetorically convenient—“ready to kill Jews” due to the allegedly obscure intentions behind “Muhammad Sawalha, a senior UK-based Muslim Brotherhood figure connected to Hamas”, according to the website Gaza Flotilla 101.

According to the AP, the UN has confirmed that Israel's Mossad kidnapped Gaza's chief power plant engineer and illegally rendered him to an Israeli torture center and then prison, where he is currently held.

Maksim Butkevych, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Ukraine, said the agency "suspects Israeli and perhaps Ukrainian security forces had a hand in his disappearance and imprisonment in Israel." (Source: AP)

"We don't know details of his trip from Ukraine to Israel — let's put it this way," said Butkevych. "But unfortunately, what happened looks like a violent abduction and not a legal extradition or any other legal action on the part of authorities." Both the Israeli and Ukrainian Foreign Ministries declined to comment on the U.N. allegations. (Source: AP)

Aftenposten: READOUT NORTH ATLANTIC COUNCIL MEETING JANUARY 28, 2009

"AFGHANISTAN: ISAF Senior Civilian Representative Gentilini said the Afghans were eager for NATO to respond to its proposal for a military technical agreement, sent to NATO in early January. The SCR and several Perm Reps stressed that a MTA with the Afghans could help address the issue of civilian casualties, but many cautioned that the legal difficulties involved in negotiating such an agreement called for the Alliance to proceed with caution. Saying it needed more time to seek instructions, Hungary blocked consensus on a decision that fully filling the Elections Support Force (ESF) should take priority over filling the NATO Response Force (NRF), which would have allowed nations to pull NRF components for use in the ESF. The NAC will revisit the issue next week."

Read cable

Aftenposten: AMBASSADORS JANUARY 11 MEETING WITH NATO SENIOR ISAF REPRESENTATIVE ON GIROA PROPOSED AFGHANISTAN-NATO MILITARY TECHNICAL AGREEMENT

A little more than two months ago, as in some previous cases, Greg Mitchell started live-blogging when a major story broke. But a funny thing happened with WikiLeaks’ “Cablegate” release: The story, and the reader interest, did not go away after a couple of days—as the cables kept coming out, the controversies spread, and Julian Assange became a household name in America.

The Jerusalem Post: Suleiman promised to stop Gaza elections

"Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman promised Israel in 2005 that he would prevent Hamas from gaining control over Gaza, according to a US diplomatic cable released on Friday.

According to the cable, which was leaked to WikiLeaks and published by Norweigan newspaper Aftenposten, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau, secretly visited Suleiman, then the head of Egyptian intelligence, in September 2005. Gilad then reported on the visit to US diplomats in Tel Aviv."

Read cable

Aftenposten: NATO ALLIES LACK COHESION DURING FIRST MEETING ON GEORGIA CRISIS