The Guardian: WikiLeaks cables show close US relationship with Egyptian president
"US embassy cable predicted Hosni Mubarak, if still alive in 2011, would run again for presidency 'and, inevitably, win'.
Secret US embassy cables sent from Cairo in the past two years reveal that the Obama administration wanted to maintain a close political and military relationship with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who is now facing a popular uprising."
The Guardian: US reported 'routine' police brutality in Egypt, WikiLeaks cables show
"Torture widely used against criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers, embassy cables suggest.
Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released today by WikiLeaks."
The Guardian: US embassy cables: Egypt's bloggers take on key role as political activists
"Egypt's bloggers are playing an increasingly important role in broadening the scope of acceptable political and social discourse, and self-expression. Bloggers' discussions of sensitive issues, such as sexual harassment, sectarian tension and the military, represent a significant change from five years ago, and have influenced society and the media."
The Guardian: US embassy cables: Mubarak: Egypt's president-for-life
"President Mubarak last visited Washington in April 2004, breaking a twenty year tradition of annual visits to the White House. Egyptians view President Mubarak's upcoming meeting with the President as a new beginning to the U.S.-Egyptian relationship that will restore a sense of mutual respect that they believe diminished in recent years. President Mubarak has been encouraged by his initial interactions with the President, the Secretary, and Special Envoy Mitchell, and understands that the Administration wants to restore the sense of warmth that has traditionally characterized the U.S.-Egyptian partnership."
New York Times: Cables Show Delicate U.S. Dealings With Egypt’s Leaders
"It was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first meeting as secretary of state with President Hosni Mubarak, in March 2009, and the Egyptians had an odd request: Mrs. Clinton should not thank Mr. Mubarak for releasing an opposition leader from prison because he was ill.
In fact, a confidential diplomatic cable signed by the American ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, advised Mrs. Clinton to avoid even mentioning the name of the man, Ayman Nour, even though his imprisonment in 2005 had been condemned worldwide, not least by the Bush administration."
Aftenposten: Egypt: Updated Democracy Strategy
"Our fundamental reform goal in Egypt remains democratic transformation, including the expansion of political freedom and democratic pluralism, respect for human rights, and a stable, democratic and legitimate transition to the post-Mubarak era. While our programs in the areas of judicial reform and decentralization are well-conceived and have had some notable successes, we propose to expand our support for civil society, especially through offshore programming."
El País: Una veintena de políticos haitianos tienen vínculos con el tráfico de drogas (Around twenty Haitian politicians are linked to drug trafficking)
"Según un informe confidencial de EE UU redactado antes del seísmo, la misión de Naciones Unidas deberá permanecer hasta finales de 2013. (According to a confidential cable from the United States written before the earthquake, the United Nations mission should stay in the country until the end of 2013.)"
El País: EE UU, contra la impunidad del maltratador en México (The United States against impunity of gender infractors in Mexico)
"Los cables denuncian que el 60% de las mujeres mexicanas han sufrido alguna vez la violencia machista, miles han sido asesinadas, y la impunidad de los agresores, facilitada por las disputas entre competencias federales o estatales, malogra los esfuerzos del gobierno de Felipe Calderón contra la erradicación de la lacra. (The cables denounce that 60% of the Mexican women have suffered at least once gender violence, thousands have been murdered y the infractors remain unpunished thanks to political struggles and competitions between the federal government and that of the states, which hinder the efforts of Felipe Calderón's government against this problem.)"
The FBI announced on Thursday that it has executed over 40 search warrants in the United States today against individuals who are thought to have participated in cyber attacks against "major companies and organizations" who cut off sources of funding to WikiLeaks. The FBI states in its press release:
A group calling itself “Anonymous” has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies’ and organizations’ actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the group makes available for free download on the Internet. The victims included major U.S. companies across several industries.
The press release coincides with events also unfolding in France and UK.
Paris police also announced on Thursday that a French teenager suspected of involvement in the DDoS attacks in the United States was taken into custody for a few hours last December.
New York Times: Cables Show How U.S. Privately Pressured Egypt
"It was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first meeting as secretary of state with President Hosni Mubarak, in March 2009, and the Egyptians had an odd request: Mrs. Clinton should not thank Mr. Mubarak for releasing an opposition leader from prison because he was ill.
In fact, a confidential diplomatic cable signed by the American ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, advised Mrs. Clinton to avoid even mentioning the name of the man, Ayman Nour, even though his imprisonment in 2005 had been condemned worldwide, not least by the Bush administration."
El País: EE UU pone en duda la capacidad de Repsol para desarrollar su mayor proyecto petrolero en Venezuela (The United States doubts the abilities of Repsol to develop its major oil project in Venezuela)
"Washington se esfuerza por intensificar la relación entre la estadounidense Chevron y Caracas. Las multinacionales abogan por un boicot general para arrancar mejores condiciones a Chávez. (Washington makes an effort in order to intensify the relation between the American company Chevron and Caracas. The multinational oil companies request a general boycott to gain better conditions from Chavez.)"
El País: Estados Unidos considera que Chile afrontó la muerte de Pinochet mejor que España la de Franco (The United States believes that Chile faced Pinochet's death in a better way than Spain the death of Franco)
"Washington celebró la forma en que Chile afrontó la muerte del dictador, en oposición al caso de España. (Washington celebrated the way chile faced the dictator's death, in opposition to the case of Spain.)"
Aftenposten: Does Hamas have a cash flow problem in Gaza?
"Hamas was more than a week late in paying January salaries and, according to Post´s Gaza contacts, has not yet paid those salaries in full. While most contacts report that Hamas faces a liquidity crisis, they disagree on the cause. Hamas reportedly relies heavily on foreign assistance to support its budget, and the current cash flow problem is most likely a result of Egyptian anti-smuggling efforts. Gaza-based contacts report that Hamas is cutting costs and increasing its internal revenue collection, through taxes and fees. The amount of extra revenue that these efforts can generate is limited, however. Gazans speculate that recent real estate investments may also have tied up some of Hamas´s available cash."
Aftenposten: Rail Projects Underway, But a Uniform Network Remains Elusive
"While two rail construction projects in Afghanistan are underway and several more are under discussion, the dream of a nationwide rail network remains remote. Small-scale projects sponsored by neighboring countries require different rail gauges, matching those of the countries these projects border; while the security situation is delaying two projects and likely deterring proposals for more. The enforcement of a single rail gauge is not practical since it would fail to make connections with at least half of Afghanistan´s neighbors. The Afghan Government must obtain funding f´ and build gauge changing stations if it is serious about connecting Afghanistan´s major population centers and industrial areas by train."
El País: Estados Unidos temió que Chávez influyera en Paraguay (The United states feared Chavez influence in Paraguay)
"El Departamento de Estado considera a Lugo un presidente afable y honesto. (The State Department considers Lugo as a kind and honest president.)"
El País: La presión de Chávez fuerza a la prensa venezolana a suavizar las críticas (Chavez pressure forces the Venezuelan press to soften the criticism.)
"Los directivos de medios opuestos al presidente admiten amenazas oficiales. (The board members from the media opposed to the president admit official threats.)"
The last 7 days have seen numerous developments in the Bradley Manning story, which indicate clear problems with the official line on Manning's detainment and on the criminal investigation into Manning's charges. We have also been given insight into the management of the Brig at Quantico, and into the process by which the United States government discourages supporters of causes it find troublesome. (For the complete background on the Bradley Manning story, please see FDL's excellent timeline, here.)
Manning on Suicide Watch
Last week, as summarised in this Jane Hamsher post on FDL, Bradley Manning's conditions were decidedely worsened when Quantico Brig Commander James Averhart moved him to suicide watch - a move allowing his confinement in conditions equivalent to solitary confinement, while ostensibly being "for his own good."
For over five months, Bradley Manning has been held under Prevention of Injury (POI) watch at the Quantico Brig against the recommendations of three forensic psychiatrists. Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, has filed an Article 138 Complaint under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, asserting that this represents an abuse of Brig Commander James Averhart’s discretion.
On 27th of January 2011 at 15:00, the Pirate Party UK issued a press release in regards to the recent five arrests of Anonymous members. Amongst other points made in the Press releasethis underlining point was made:
While the Party will never condone any illegal actions, it can understand the frustration felt by many who feel powerless in the face of multinational corporations and Governments unwilling to step in.
That normal, everyday people choose to take these sorts of actions shows the extent to which many people feel disenfranchised by mainstream politics and the Pirate Party aims to give such people a voice and a means to engage in these issues through lawful and political methods rather than resorting to 'hacktivism' and other actions that could be illegal.
Further, the Piratenpartei has filed a petition with the Deutscher Bundestag which, in part states:
Protection of whistle blowers. (Translated in Part)
While accepting an award for distinction in international law and affairs from the NY Bar Association, Geoffrey Robertson, who will defend Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at his extradition hearings in London in February, warned that the United States "risked irrevocable damage to its reputation if it pursued Assange" by "aiming the blunderbuss of its 1917 Espionage Act, death penalty and all, at a publisher who is a citizen of a friendly nation," according to the The Age: US told to drop Assange pursuit.
The Sydney Morning Herald writes:
In an NBC News report dated January 24, US military officials reportedly confessed that they have been unable to find any direct connections between Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking secret documents, and Julian Assange:
Officials with the U.S. military, say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.
Further, in the same briefing, the Defense Department officially denied the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, while admitting that:
Brig Commander James Averhart did not have the authority to place Manning on suicide watch for two days last week, and that only medical personnel are allowed to make that call.
Recently a Facebook friend featured an unfamiliar flag as his profile picture; a red crescent held in a vivid red background. Then, alternative news headlines emerged about major turmoil in the country of Tunisia. Next thing I knew, my friend was participating in the civil unrest that broke out there. Through the window opened by social media, I began to feel the outrage and intensity experienced by many people on the other side of the world. A quote from the film V for Vendetta came to me; “Remember, remember the fifth of November; the gunpowder, treason, and plot!” The surreal reports and rapidly changing scenery reported by my friend somewhat blurred the line between reality and fiction.
Tonight at 6 p.m.(23:00 utc) the Personal Democracy Forum, in partnership with New York University's Interactive Technology Program, will present the second symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet Freedom.
The panel will include:
El País: El FBI interroga a sus anchas a los inmigrantes en territorio de México (FBI interrogates freely immigrants in Mexican territory)
"Calderón autorizó a los agentes a seguir la pista del terrorismo internacional. (Calderón authorized the [American] agents to follow the track of international terrorism.)"
El País: Sicarios adiestrados por EE UU (Hit men trained by the United States)
"Rogelio López Villafana, un ex militar del Ejército mexicano entrenado por EE UU, fue reclutado a la fuerza por los Zetas y estuvo implicado en un plan para asesinar a un ex fiscal general adjunto. (Rogelio López Villafana, an ex-soldier of the Mexican Army trained in the United States was forcibly recruited by the "Zetas" and was involved in a plot to kill an ex attorney.)"
Al Jazeera launches Transparency Unit:
Launched in January 2011, the Al Jazeera Transparency Unit (AJTU) aims to mobilize its audience - both in the Arab world and further afield - to submit all forms of content (documents, photos, audio & video clips, as well as “story tips”) for editorial review and, if merited, online broadcast and transmission on our English and Arabic-language broadcasts. ...
From human rights to poverty to official corruption, AJTU will fairly evaluate and pursue all leads and content submitted, without geographical, political, cultural, or religious bias.
That "WikiLeaks has divulged nothing new" has become, in the last 8 months, a refrain within officialdom and the mainstream press.
Those who have been following the events for themselves know otherwise. So numerous are the valuable public interest disclosures facilitated by WikiLeaks that to encapsulate them can sometimes seem a daunting task.
Here, though, are five efforts by prominent journalists and organizations to do just that. The five posts here serve as digests of the last year's WikiLeaks news, selected according to personal assessment of newsworthiness and salience. They are a valuable resource for anyone who wants to ascertain for him or herself whether it is true that "WikiLeaks told us nothing new."
The Nation: Greg Mitchell: Why WikiLeaks Matters
The Nation's Greg Mitchell is by now one of the key names in WikiLeaks coverage. His WikiLeaks live blog has been a fixture since late November for anyone wanting to keep abreast of the news on WikiLeaks. He has also written a book on WikiLeaks' activities since April 2009, which will be available soon. In this post, Mitchell compiled, from his own archive, a huge list of valuable points of information WikiLeaks brought to the public eye.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Rainey Reitman: The Best of Cablegate: Instances Where Public Discourse Benefited from the Leaks
This post by Rainey Reitman lists "a small selection of cables that [have] been critical to understanding and evaluating controversial events." Among the revelations overviewed are the DYNCORP "dancing boy" scandal, and the misuse of the U.S. diplomatic corp to fix contracts and law reform for big business. Valuable commentary is provided for each entry.
It is not clear from the UK Press Association report why Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt responded to reporters' questions about Julian Assange in London two days ago by addressing the hypothetical question of Assange's extradition from Sweden to the US, but he didn't dismiss it as hypothetical:
Mr Reinfeldt said Sweden's policy was not to extradite people to countries with the death penalty. But he said Sweden's courts, not its government, would decide that. ...
"We should remember when we ask questions about this that these are legal systems talking to each other, not politicians."
We know from the cables and other sources (see the summary in section 7, 92-96, of the "skeleton" legal argument) that Swedish courts have in the past been complicit in the illegal kidnapping of refugee claimants by US agents. More broadly, the role of diplomacy as mediator between law and politics has arisen repeatedly in many of the cables released by its major media partners and WikiLeaks.
Since the role of the courts is usually to interpret legislation ("policy") or to strike it down if it is unconstitutional, Reinfeldt's apparent failure to affirm Swedish refusal to extradite to countries that retain capital punishment raises questions.
Via @calixte on Twitter
Mark Stephens (@MarksLarks), Julian Assange's London-based solicitor, tweets today:
Biographies of the blind. Assange films & books: puffery by people without knowledge of his life http://tiny.cc/c08ut
As well as the biopics discussed in the Independent report and Daniel Domscheit-Berg's book, a growing number of instant books about WikiLeaks have been announced for publication in advance of Assange's autobiography, including a few that may be of substance: Heather Brooke's report on her dealings with the Guardian over a leaked trove of WikiLeaks documents, the Guardian's own version of their history with Assange and WikiLeaks, and Greg Mitchell's forthcoming narrative of WikiLeaks since last April (see his continuing work on WikiLeaks news at The Nation).
Talking-point politics, taken for political discourse is delusion. It's akin to the cunning nature of chatter in the mind of a neurotic. It masquerades itself as thinking. I will not offer the reader a well-intentioned flag to die under. It's contrary to my nature to send anyone to my gallows. I believe in wisdom. Living according to my conscience is the greatest pleasure. Its orgasm is sanity. In doing (and not doing the above), I hope that I have paid respect to any reader who happens to offer this essay his or her kind and undeserved attention.
If I were asked who the most relevant and important voices in post-modern political thought are, I would say former Eastern European dissidents. I only became acquainted with them three year after the Soviet Union collapsed. I was teased that I read them like ‘self-help’ for Eastern Europe. Not being too interested with the previous generations' culture war, I remarked, “Yes. But, also for the West.” Wikileaks, to me, is simply a larger dose of the medicine that these thinkers prescribed for the individual in the post-modern state.
The Guardian: WikiLeaks points to US meddling in Haiti
"US embassy cables reveal how anxious the US was to enlist Brazil to keep the deposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti.
Confidential US diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released this week by WikiLeaks reveal Washington's well-known obsession to keep exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti and Haitian affairs."
Le Monde: En 2007, les ministres suédois voulaient stopper les réfugiés irakiens (In 2007, the Swedish ministers wanted to stop the Iraqi refugees)
"Des télégrammes diplomatiques américains transmis par WikiLeaks au quotidien suédois Svenska Dagbladet font état, vendredi 21 janvier, des efforts de plusieurs ministres suédois pour limiter l'arrivée de réfugiés irakiens en Suède. (The American diplomatic cables sent by Wikileaks to the Swedish paper "Svenska Dagbladet" report, this friday January 21st, the efforts of several Swedish ministers to limit the entry of Iraqi refugees in Sweden.)"
According to Russia Times, Julian Assange has been granted a Russian visa and plans to visit the country soon. With his next court hearing scheduled for February 7, Assange may be able to visit Russia in three weeks, but only if the Swedish extradition request is turned down by Britain.
No details of the agenda and schedule have been disclosed. However, by that time a Russia-based pro-WikiLeaks NGO currently being established is likely to get its official registration.
The Russian News Service quoted by Russia Times quotes Israel Shamir as its source for the article. Shamir is a highly controversial figure who was associated with Wikileaks in distributing the US State cables.
In other news, Moscow Times reports "Russia's Own WikiLeaks Takes Off".
http://wlcentral.org/node/1010/edit
The German language website Welt Online continued publication of WikiLeaks cables critical of Turkey, in their bid to "Break the WikiLeaks Cartel". According to cables cited today, the opening of the PLO Embassy in Turkey was only an excuse for Abbas' visit in 2009, and Israel considers Turkey to be "lost to the west".
The cables document how not only the USA and Israel, but also the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah were concerned with Turkey's silent support for Hamas, which the PLO official quoted in the cable of June 3, 2009 called "very dangerous". Turkey's ambivalent relationship to Hamas, while nothing new, required Turkish officials to "talk out of both sides of their mouth" when dealing with American officials. The U.S. Congress' anger is is clearly visible in the cables. This push-me pull-you continued well into 2009, when U.S. Ambassador James F. Jeffrey reported on February 9th that President Gül and especially Foreign Minister Babacan were taking extra care to deal with the "extremely critical" remarks that Erdogan had made towards Israel in order to repair the "traditionally strong relationship between Israel and Turkey".
The cables document the further deterioration of the relationship, to the degree where the Israeli Ambassador to Ankara, Gabi Levy, called Erdogan a fundamentalist who "hates us with religious fury". Whereupon the Americans soberly confirm that their contacts inside and outside of the Turkish government are of the opinion that Erdogan probably "just hates Israel".
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