Source: Abode of Chaos (CC)

It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out because it’s such an unusual choice. Normally you have to commit tens of thousands of armed troops to Afghanistan before you go home with one of these babies. From the blog of Birgitta Jónsdóttir:

[On] February 1st 2012 the entire parliamentary group of The Movement of the Icelandic Parliament nominated Private Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Following is the reasoning we sent to the committee explaining why we felt compelled to nominate Private Bradley Manning for this important recognition of an individual effort to have an impact for peace in our world.

Our letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

We have the great honor of nominating Private First Class Bradley Manning for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Manning is a soldier in the United States army who stands accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The leaked documents pointed to a long history of corruption, war crimes, and imperialism by the United States government in international dealings. These revelations have fueled democratic uprising around the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia. According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on our foreign policies, and most recently contributed to the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S.troops from the occupation in Iraq.

Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for well over a year by the U.S. government without a trial. He spent over ten months of that time period in solitary confinement, conditions which experts worldwide have criticized as torturous. Juan Mendez, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has repeatedly requested and been denied a private meeting with Manning to assess his conditions.

The documents made public by WikiLeaks should never have been kept from public scrutiny. The revelations – including video documentation of an incident in which American soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists in Iraq – have helped to fuel a worldwide discussion about America’s overseas engagements, civilian casualties of war, imperialistic manipulations, and rules of engagement. Citizens worldwide owe a great debt to the WikiLeaks whistleblower for shedding light on these issues, and so I urge the Committee to award this prestigious prize to accused whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Sincerely,
Birgitta Jónsdóttir
Margrét Tryggvadóttir
Þór Saari
Members of the Icelandic Parliament for The Movement

Julian Assange. Photo: Espen Moe (CC)

Common Dreams reports:

Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, has announced plans for a new television series. The program will launch mid-March and will include ten weekly half-hour episodes featuring “in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world.”

Should things go accordingly for Assange, the show will “explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it. Are we heading towards utopia, or dystopia and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before,” Assange states.

The theme of the show will be “the world tomorrow”. The Wikileaks press release adds:

Upheavals and revolutions in the Middle East have commenced an era of political change that is still unfolding. In the West, the deterioration of the rule of law has demonstrated the bankruptcy of once leading political institutions and ideologies. The internet has never been so strong, or so much under attack.

At this pivotal moment there is an awareness of the need to radically rethink the world around us.

WikiLeaks, as the world’s boldest publisher, has been at the front line of this global movement for understanding and change. Its founder, Julian Assange, as the subject of an ongoing Grand Jury investigation in the United States for over 500 days now, is one of the world’s most recognizable revolutionary figures.

Both a pioneer for a more just world and a victim of political repression, he is uniquely placed to catalyse a global discussion on how to go forward.

In recognition of this, Assange will draw together controversial voices from across the political spectrum – iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders – each to offer a window on the world tomorrow and their ideas on how to secure a brighter future.

Assange is planning to host the show, although it is uncertain whether or not he will actually be around for this. The state of his pending court decision — potential extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault — remains unknown until February 1st.

Read more here.

What better way to sell your wares than to produce a marketing video showing exactly how your product works? Even if that product is spyware, marketed to oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks, as part of its Spy Files trove of documents, released on Thursday a series of videos from Gamma International, a UK-based firm that markets the Finfisher spyware.

The video shows how the company’s product can be used to sniff WiFi networks from a hotel lobby, hack computers and cell phones, or intercept Skype communications and siphon encryption passwords.

Read More on WIRED’s Threat Level

“I think WikiLeaks represents a very important impulse and the start of a strong movement toward anti-corporate sentiment and the demand for government transparency,” he explains in this new interview, “As ineffectual as that movement may end up being – because it started so late in the process of corporate control being consolidated…”

He moves from discussing fictional zombie-fighting to the brutal real-world military violence in neo-colonial nations around the world. And he ultimately wonders if our wireless technology-enhanced future will also include the potential for massive global disinformation.

The whistleblowing website set up by Julian Assange said that it is temporarily suspending publication of leaks to fight a “blockade” by credit card companies.

The refusal to accept donations has cost the website “tens of millions of dollars” in lost funding, the website said.

Mr Assange was due to make the announcement at a press conference in London, and appeal for donations to help flight the blockade.

WikiLeaks said “in order to fight for its survival” it has decided temporarily to stop publishing secret state documents, while it battles the financial blockade through the courts.

In a statement, WikiLeaks said: “In order to ensure our future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents.”

Read More: Telegraph

WikiLeaks released a mysterious encrypted file on Wednesday after telling its followers on Twitter to stand by for “an important announcement.”

WikiLeaks did not identify the contents of the 571 megabyte file and it could not be opened without a decryption key, which the anti-secrecy website said would be released “at the appropriate moment.”

In July of last year, WikiLeaks posted what it called an “insurance file,” which was also encrypted.

According to press reports, the 1.4-gigabyte file was intended for public release in the event of something untoward happening to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange is currently fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden where he is wanted to face questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The release of the latest mystery file comes just days after WikiLeaks published more than 130,000 US diplomatic cables from what it says is a cache of more than 251,000 documents.

Without confirming the authenticity of the latest documents, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States “strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information…

[continues at AFP]

Julian Assange may be about to address concerns over his comments last year that 9/11 truth was a “false conspiracy” which he found “annoying”. Assange made the statement despite Wikileaks’ 2009 release of half a million pager messages on the day of 9/11 from New York City officials, many of which contradicted the official story.

The Wikileaks founder is currently in London embroiled in an extradition appeal relating to allegations of rape, which many suspect are unfounded and part of a smear campaign against Assange.

An increasing number of activists are questioning Assange’s motives, including some of his former colleagues like Cryptome’s John Young. However, we have noted that Anonymous, the hacking collective that has vigorously defended Assange, is doing excellent work in exposing the power elite head on, particularly with their intention to shine a light on the secretive gathering of globalists at this week’s Bohemian Grove confab.

More on Prison Planet Live

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman moderates an entertaining two-hour conversation in London between Julian Assange and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, discussing the broader meaning of Wikileaks, the media, and “the attack on the public use of reason”. Thanks to Zizek, the discussion also veers between everything from dirty jokes to Stalinist propaganda to Psycho to the rumors linking him romantically to Lady Gaga. Things get going about ten minutes in.

Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.

For six months, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade.

To put things in perspective, upping the hourly wage to 62 cents would have cost Hanes an additional $1.6 million each year. Hanesbrands turned $211 million in profit last year and CEO Richard Noll personally was paid $10 million.

The faces at the Pentagon are still mighty red since WikiLeaks. And they don’t want a repeat. A new directive from the Department of Defense aims at squelching leaks — by deputizing a massive number of employees as involuntary snitches.

The document, titled “Counterintelligence Awareness and Reporting (CIAR),” directs DoD employees, military and civilian alike, to “Report, in accordance…the contacts, activities, indicators, and behaviors” of their coworkers. And given the WikiLeaks story, this means keeping tabs on your neighbor’s computer. Suspicious (and must-report) behavior includes:

“Unauthorized possession or operation of cameras, recording devices, computers, and communication devices where classified information is handled or stored.”

“Discussions of classified information over a non-secure communication device.”

“Unauthorized copying, printing, faxing, e-mailing, or transmitting classified material.”

Read More on Gizmodo

BBC News

Secret US embassy cables released by Wikileaks show nations are racing to “carve up” Arctic resources — oil, gas and even rubies — as the ice retreats.

They suggest that Arctic states, including the US and Russia, are all pushing to stake a claim.

The opportunity to exploit resources has come because of a dramatic fall in the amount of ice in the Arctic.

The US Geological Survey estimates oil reserves off Greenland are as big as those in the North Sea.

The cables were released by the Wikileaks whistleblower website as foreign ministers from the eight Arctic Council member states – Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland – met in Nuuk, Greenland on Thursday to sign a treaty on international search-and-rescue in the Arctic and discuss the region’s future challenges.

The cables claim the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller joked with the Americans saying “if you stay out, then the rest of us will have more to carve up in the Arctic”.

For more information, see original article.

The WSJ calls for Assange to be indicted, elaborating on the difference between him and regular media (they use the NYT as their counterexample).

Yet the WSJ also announces the start of their new site, Safe House:

Documents and databases: They’re key to modern journalism. But they’re almost always hidden behind locked doors, especially when they detail wrongdoing such as fraud, abuse, pollution, insider trading, and other harms. That’s why we need your help. If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service.

The easy criticism is that the Journal, i.e. Murdoch, is being hypocritical.  But no good deed goes unpunished: the difference is that Assange has set up Wikileaks so that the attention is on himself.  That may sound like arrogance, but it’s also a technical maneuver: if the focus is on him, it’s not on the person who leaked him the information.

Safe House is explicitly the opposite:

You agree not to use SafeHouse for any unlawful purpose… we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice.

Assange and Murdoch represent two extreme ends of a spectrum. Assange has declared himself anti-US, and Wikileaks is his weapon. Murdoch is explicity pro-US, and any information he receives will be filtered accordingly. In other words, neither represent journalism in any meaningful way. They are both commentary.

US forces were stationed just a few hundred yards from Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in October 2008, according to reports within the WikiLeaks embassy cables.

The revelation that US forces were so close to the world’s most wanted man in 2008 comes after material from the Guantánamo files suggested the US may have received the intelligence that led them to Bin Laden as early as 2008.

The US soldiers were due to perform a routine posting “training the trainers” of Pakistan’s 70,000-strong federal military unit, the Frontier Corps.

Abbottabad is home to the Pakistan Military Academy, the country’s version of Sandhurst in Britain, and trains officers from across the nation. The academy is streets away from where Bin Laden was tracked down and killed.

Read More: Guardian

By Marcin n® ☼ (CC)

A story from March 25, 2011 by Christopher Hope, Robert Winnett, Holly Watt and Heidi Blake for the Telegraph hints at what we might have to look forward to now that Osama is fish food:

Al-Qaeda terrorists have threatened to unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” on the West if Osama Bin Laden is caught or assassinated, according to documents to be released by the WikiLeaks website, which contain details of the interrogations of more than 700 Guantanamo detainees…

A senior Al-Qaeda commander claimed that the terrorist group has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will be detonated if Bin-Laden is ever caught or assassinated. The US authorities uncovered numerous attempts by Al-Qaeda to obtain nuclear materials and fear that terrorists have already bought uranium. Sheikh Mohammed told interrogators that Al-Qaeda would unleash a “nuclear hellstorm”…

Lady on bed adorned with Raëlian symbol.

Below are documents leaked from the U.S. Consulate in Montreal, via WikiLeaks:

¶1. SUMMARY: THE FOLLOWING IS SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON
THE MONTREAL-BASED RAELIAN GROUP, WHOSE MEMBER DR. BRIGITTE
BOISSELIER ANNOUNCED AT A DECEMBER 27 PRESS CONFERENCE IN
HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST CLONED HUMAN
BEING, A 7 POUND BABY GIRL NICKNAMED EVE. AND ITS TWO MAIN
FIGURES LEADER CLAUDE VORILHON, BETTER KNOWN AS RAEL, AND
DR. BOISSELIER. ONE LIKELY RESULT OF THE BOISSELIER
ANNOUNCEMENT IS THAT CANADA’S PENDING LEGISLATION TO BAN
HUMAN CLONING COULD CONTAIN STRICTER RESTRICTIONS. END
SUMMARY.

¶2. THE RAELIAN MOVEMENT WAS FOUNDED BY FRENCHMAN CLAUDE
VORILHON, A FORMER SPORTS JOURNALIST, FAILED SINGER, RADIO
COMMENTATOR AND AVID STOCK CAR RACER. VORILHON CLAIMS TO
HAVE BEEN CONCEIVED ON DECEMBER 25, 1945, BY A FRENCH MOTHER
AND AN ALIEN FATHER. SPECIALISTS SAY HE WAS BORN IN VICHY,
FRANCE IN 1946. VORILHON WHO USES THE NAME RAEL (GOD’S
LIGHT) (PRONOUNCED RA-EL IN FRENCH (RHYMES WITH KAL-EL AND
JOR-EL)) SAYS HE CREATED THE MOVEMENT AFTER ALIENS VISITED
HIM IN CENTRAL FRANCE IN 1973. AT THAT TIME, LITTLE GREEN
ALIENS (APPROXIMATELY 4 FT TALL) TOLD HIM –IN FLUENT FRENCH-
- EARTHLINGS HAD BEEN CREATED IN A LABORATORY 25,000 YEARS
AGO. SINCE THESE ALIENS WHICH HE CALLS THE ELOHIM (THE
HEBREW WORD FOR GOD) ARE 25,000 YEARS AHEAD OF US, RAEL SAYS
CLONING IS VERY SIMPLE TASK FOR THEM.

¶3. ALTHOUGH THE SECT IS BASED IN MONTREAL–AND NOT
SWITZERLAND AS THE BRITISH TABLOID PRESS HAS REPORTED –RAEL
MOVED HIS PERSONAL HEADQUARTERS TO FLORIDA IN THE EARLY
NINETIES. WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED RAEL WAS MOVING TO FLORIDA,
RADIO COMMENTATORS JOKED HE WAS SIMPLY IMITATING QUEBEC
SNOWBIRDS OR THAT HE WANTED TO GET CLOSER TO NASCAR
CIRCUITS. HOWEVER, SOME SAW U.S. EXPANSION AS A LOGICAL
BUSINESS MOVE. ON THE ONE HAND, SINCE THE 1960S, QUEBEC HAS
PROVEN TO BE TOUGH RECRUITING GROUNDS FOR ALL RELIGIOUS
GROUPS, MAINSTREAM OR OTHERWISE. ON THE OTHER, THE U.S.
OFFERS MUCH BIGGER POOLS OF MONEY AND TARGET AUDIENCES FOR
RAELIAN COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES. BECAUSE THE GROUP IS
RECOGNIZED AS AN ATHEIST RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION BY THE
QUEBEC GOVERNMENT IT ENJOYS THE SAME FISCAL ADVANTAGES AS
OTHER RELIGIOUS GROUPS.

¶4. THE GROUP OPERATES A THEME PARK CALLED UFO LAND IN
QUEBEC’S EASTERN TOWNSHIPS AREA. THE FACILITY, WHICH
CONSISTS MAINLY OF A LARGE FLYING SAUCER, A LARGE-SCALE DNA
MOLECULE AND SOME ROOMS FOR SUMMER SEMINARS AND MEDIA
INTERVIEWS, WAS RECENTLY VANDALIZED BUT IS SCHEDULED TO
REOPEN THIS SUMMER.

¶5. IN PHOTOS AND TELEVISION APPEARANCES, RAEL SURROUNDS
HIMSELF WITH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. RAELIAN MEDIA KITS INCLUDE
MANY PICTURES OF SCANTILY DRESSED “MEMBERS.” RAEL PREACHES
“SENSUAL MEDITATION” WHICH ENABLES THE FAITHFUL TO REACH THE
“COSMIC ORGASM.”

¶6. DESPITE THE SECT’S TWO POWERFUL MARKETING TOOLS, SEX AND
UFOS, THE RAELIANS HAVE VERY FEW MEMBERS. THEIR WEB SITE
WWW.RAEL.ORG CLAIMS -IN TWENTY LANGUAGES– TO HAVE 55,000
MEMBERS IN 84 COUNTRIES. HOWEVER MIKE KROPVELD, EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR OF THE MONTREAL-BASED INFO-SECTE (NO RELATION WITH
THE PARIS ORGANIZATION OF THE SAME NAME) TOLD POST THAT THE
RAELIANS INFLATE THEIR FIGURES WITH PAST AND OCCASIONAL
MEMBERS. BECAUSE OF ALL THE MEDIA ATTENTION, THE GROUP
CREATES A LOT OF CURIOSITY -A RAEL SPOKESMAN STATED IN THE
LOCAL PRESS ON DECEMBER 30 THAT THE WEBSITE WAS GETTING ONE
MILLION HITS PER HOUR ON DECEMBER 26 — BUT MOST VISITORS
ONLY ATTEND A FEW MEETINGS. THE ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP IS BETWEEN
2,000 AND 3,000 WORLDWIDE AND ABOUT 700 IN MONTREAL, SAYS
KROPVELD.

¶7. ACCORDING TO LOCAL NEWS ANALYSTS, THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF
RAELIANS IS TO CREATE LIFE IN A LABORATORY WHICH WOULD MAKE
HUMAN BEINGS IMMORTAL AND ENABLE THEM TO CREATE ANOTHER
CIVILIZATION ON ANOTHER PLANET. IN THE MEANTIME, RAEL WANTS
TO BUILD AN EMBASSY IN ISRAEL TO WELCOME THE ELOHIM WHEN
THEY COME BACK IN 2035. THE GROUP HAS ALSO BEEN CRITICIZED
FOR ADVOCATING THE USE OF GENETICS FOR EUGENIC ATTEMPTS AT
IMPROVING THE HUMAN RACE. THE GROUP’S STRUCTURE WITH PRIESTS
AND BISHOPS IS BASED ALONG THE LINES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

¶8. UNTIL RECENTLY THE GROUP AVOIDED SERIOUS CONTROVERSY.
THERE HAVE NOT BEEN ANY STORIES OF FORMER MEMBERS
COMPLAINING ABOUT BEING CONNED OUT OF THEIR MONEY OR
PHYSICALLY ABUSED OR SEDUCED, AND NO INVOLVEMENT WITH MINORS
– EXCEPT ONE CASE IN FRANCE.

¶9. NONETHELESS, THE RAELIANS KNOW HOW TO PIGGYBACK ON
STORIES TO GET PUBLICITY. WHEN IN 1993, AUTHORITIES IN
QUEBEC DECIDED AGAINST INSTALLING CONDOM DISTRIBUTORS IN
SCHOOLS, RAELIANS VISITED THE KIDS WITH FREE SAMPLES. IN THE
WAKE OF THE RECENT PEDOPHILE CHARGES AGAINST VARIOUS
RELIGIOUS ORDERS, THE GROUP WENT BACK TO THE SCHOOLS IN
QUEBEC. THEIR PLAN THIS TIME WAS TO HAND OUT SMALL WOODEN
CROSSES FOR THE STUDENTS TO BURN. BUT PUBLIC AND
GOVERNMENTAL OPPOSITION STOPPED THE LATER PROJECT. IN BOTH
CASES, ALMOST ALL THE PUBLICITY THEY GARNERED WAS BAD.

¶10. SENSING A SIMILAR WAVE OF CONDEMNATION, RAEL HAS
PUBLICLY DISTANCED HIMSELF FROM DR. BOISSELIER, A RAELIAN
BISHOP, AND HER CLONING WORK, SAYING HE HAD GOTTEN RID OF
CLONAID TWO YEARS AGO. HOWEVER, KROPVELD BELIEVES THAT
CLONING IS BY FAR THE GROUP’S MOST DANGEROUS WORK. KROPFELD
EVEN DOUBTS RAEL REALLY BELIEVES IN CLONING HUMAN BEINGS
BEYOND ITS MARKETING POSSIBILITIES FOR HIMSELF AS SECT
LEADER.

¶11. AS FOR DR BRIGITTE BOISSELIER, SHE WAS BORN IN 1956 IN
FRANCE. SHE HOLDS TWO PHDS IN CHEMISTRY, ONE FROM THE
UNIVERSITY OF DIJON IN FRANCE AND ONE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF
HOUSTON. AFTER HOUSTON SHE WAS HIRED BY AIR LIQUIDE THE
FRENCH INDUSTRIAL AND MEDICAL GAS MULTINATIONAL TO WORK ON
REVERSIBLE OXYGEN BINDING. IN 1989, AIR LIQUIDE PROMOTED HER
TO VP RESEARCH.

¶12. PRIOR TO JOINING CLONAID (SEE WWW.CLONAID.COM) IN 1997,
DR. BOISSELIER HAD NOT WORKED IN BIOLOGY OR REPRODUCTION
TECHNIQUES. THE LAS VEGAS-BASED CLONAID RECEIVED $500,000
FROM MARK HUNT TO BUILD A LABORATORY IN WEST VIRGINIA BEFORE
MR. HUNT DECIDED TO STOP FINANCING THAT PROJECT. CLONAID
ALSO CLAIMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $200,000 FROM 250 DIFFERENT
DONORS IN THE HOPE OF CLONING A FAMILY MEMBER. ON MARCH 28,
2001 DR. BOISSELIER AND RAEL DEFENDED THEIR CLONING PROJECTS
BEFORE A SENATE COMMITTEE.

¶13. COMMENT. THE PUBLICITY GARNERED BY THE CLONING
ANNOUNCEMENT MAY BE USED BY THE RAEL ORGANIZATION TO GAIN
NEW ADHERENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

¶14. CANADA LIKE MANY OTHER COUNTRIES IS IN THE PROCESS OF
ADOPTING LEGISLATION BILL C-113 WHICH WOULD BAN HUMAN
CLONING. ONE LIKELY RESULT OF THE BOISSELIER ANNOUNCEMENT IS
THAT SUCH LEGISLATION COULD CONTAIN STRICTER RESTRICTIONS.
END COMMENT.

Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, two preachers who lived off state benefits after claiming asylum, are identified by the American authorities as the key recruiters responsible for sending dozens of extremists from throughout the world to Pakistan and Afghanistan via London mosques.

The leaked WikiLeaks documents, written by senior US military commanders at Guantánamo Bay, illustrate how, for two decades, Britain effectively became a crucible of terrorism, with dozens of extremists, home-grown and from abroad, radicalised here.

Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, is described as a “haven” for extremists. United States intelligence officials concluded the mosque served as “an attack planning and propaganda production base”.

The files will raise questions over why the Government and security services failed to take action sooner to tackle the capital’s reputation as a staging post for terrorism, which became so established that the city was termed “Londonistan”.

The documents show that at least 35 detainees at Guantánamo had passed through Britain before being sent to fight against Allied forces in Afghanistan. This is thought to be more than from any other Western nation…

[continues in the Telegraph]

Protesters interrupted President Barack Obama at a campaign fund-raiser on Thursday to complain about the treatment in detention of a U.S. soldier accused of leaking documents that appeared on the WikiLeaks website.

Obama’s administration has been criticized for Bradley Manning’s treatment, although the president says the Pentagon has assured him the soldier is not being ill-treated while he is awaiting trial.

Obama was addressing a room of about 200 people — many of whom paid as much as $35,800 to see him — when a woman in a white suit stood up and announced that she and nine others sitting at her table had written a song for him.

Despite Obama’s protestations, they then broke into a song that called for the 23-year-old soldier’s release. They passed out “Free Bradley Manning” signs and the woman took off her jacket to reveal a black T-shirt with Manning’s image.

“Now, where was I?” the somewhat flustered president said after the group stopped. “There’s an example of creativity.”…

For more information, see original article.

The group Anonymous has announced an initial BofA release on its Twitter feed and the link to a .rar compressed file is here. The group’s website BankOfAmericaSuck.com appears to be down as of this posting, probably because it’s overwhelmed (or perhaps BofA has attacked it?).

The disinformation team hasn’t had a chance to analyze the leaked material from BofA yet – anyone who has please post your thoughts in the comments.

Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood studio looks set to oversee WikiLeaks: the Movie after securing the screen rights to WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, the book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

Reportedly conceived as an investigative thriller in the mould of All the President’s Men, the film will be backed by DreamWorks – the studio founded in 1994 by Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

Leigh and Harding’s book charts Julian Assange’s life and times, from his itinerant childhood through to the creation of the WikiLeaks website in 2006. It also provides the inside story of Assange’s explosive partnership with the Guardian and the release, last December, of more than 250,000 secret diplomatic cables.

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, said: “The Guardian’s unique collaboration with WikiLeaks led to what some have described as one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years.”

[Continues at The Guardian]

“What better way to make a little extra cash than to open an online store selling branded merchandise?” jokes this technology blog, acknowledging that all proceeds go towards running of the site, and that “Assange is facing a hefty legal bill which he’ll need to pay.”

The shop includes t-shirts with appropriate sayings, including “Censorship reveals fear” and “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.” Interestingly, the shop’s t-shirts are supplied by the same German merchandising company that makes t-shirts for the Spice Girls.

Julian Assange. Photo: Espen Moe (CC)

Any bets on how long it takes the United States to persuade the Swedes to turn him over to American prosecutors?

Esther Addley and Alexandra Topping report on his extradition to Sweden for the Guardian:

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Assange will appeal, his legal team has confirmed. If they lose he will be sent to Sweden in 10 days.

Delivering his ruling at a hearing at Belmarsh magistrates court in London, the chief magistrate, Howard Riddle, dismissed each of the defence’s arguments against Assange’s extradition.

Assange’s legal team had argued that the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny did not have the authority to issue a European arrest warrant. The magistrate ruled that she did possess this authority and the warrant was valid.

Ny’s credibility had been questioned by the defence team but Riddle said those doubts amounted to “very little”. A retired judge who had criticised her, Brita Sundberg-Weitman, had no firsthand knowledge or evidence to back up her opinion, he said.

The defence had argued that the allegations against Assange were not offences in English law and therefore not grounds for extradition. But Riddle said the alleged offences against Miss A of sexual assault and molestation met the criteria for extradition, and an allegation made by Miss B “would amount to rape” in this country.

In his summary Riddle accused Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Björn Hurtig, of making a deliberate attempt to mislead the court. Assange had clearly attempted to avoid the Swedish justice system before he left the country, Riddle said. “It would be a reasonable assumption from the facts that Mr Assange was deliberately avoiding interrogation before he left Sweden.”

Riddle acknowledged there had been “considerable adverse publicity against Mr Assange in Sweden”, including statements by the prime minister. But if there had been any irregularities in the Swedish system the best place to examine them was in a Swedish trial…

[continues in the Guardian]

Media Roots Radio- Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, False Memories with Guest Researcher Steven Frenda by Media Roots

During the second half of the show, guest Steven Frenda talks about his studies and research in the field of human memory: manipulated and false memories, coerced confessions, and how they relate to the legal system.

The above timeline is interactive. Scroll through it to find out more about the show’s music and to resources mentioned during the broadcast. To see a larger version of the timeline with clickable resources go to the soundcloud link below the player. If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display.

This radio show airs on shortwave radio Sundays at 6pm central time, following the Alex Jones show. The frequency is 9.350 MHz.

Listen to a previous week’s episode about the Anthrax Attacks, From the Memory Hole, or another broadcast Breaking Apart the Official 9/11 Coincidence Theory.

For more information go to www.MediaRoots.org

Who believes that WikiLeaks’ revealing of classified information warrants a penalty of death for the leakers? Surprisingly (or not), many of our leaders and political pundits do. PeopleOKWithMurderingAssange.com collects quotes from mainstream sources calling for the killing of Julian Assange, suggesting that the assassination of whistle blowers has become a respectable thing to endorse:

“This fellow Anwar al-Awlaki, a joint U.S. citizen hiding out in Yemen, is on a ‘kill list’. Mr. Assange should be put on the same list.” — G. Gordon Liddy (Former White House Adviser, talk show host)

“I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead? Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?” — Jonah Goldberg (Editor-at-large of National Review Online)

“Julian Assange should be targeted like the Taliban.” — Sarah Palin

A very interesting anonymous post on this matter was made over at the Slashdot website:

Three information security consultancies with links to US spy agencies cooked up a dirty tricks campaign late last year to destroy Wikileaks by exploiting its perceived weaknesses, reads a presentation released by the whistleblowers’ (pdf) organization that it claimed to be from the conspirators. Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed to lawyers for a desperate Bank of America an alliance that would work to discredit the whistleblowers’ website using a divide and conquer approach. Since the plan was hatched, disgruntled volunteers mentioned in the PDF broke away from Wikileaks, financial institutions withdrew services, Apelbaum was harassed by the US Government and Amazon denied service to Wikileaks’ website.

I think this should be understood/considered in conjunction with three magnificent panel discussions/interviews conducted by REAL journalists with Julian Assange himself (another REAL journalist) available as a podcast on the “Big Ideas” program on ABC TV (not the American Broadcasting Company, which hasn’t engaged in real journalism for some time, but rather the Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

The podcasts in question are here (And I recommend listening to these in the order presented below too):

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/abc-big-ideas-tv/id376778455
Episode 11: Julian Assange: Wikileaks (Released 12/2/10)
Episode 2: Wikileaks: A Discussion (Released 2/9/11)
Episode 1: Assange Meets Ellsberg (Released 2/9/11)

Mr. Wikileaks explains why they built their distributed journalism model the way they did:

Assange: “We have developed an organization that from the ground up, is multi-national — from the ground up, we spreads assets around the world like multi-national [corporations] do to avoid tax, like multinationals do to avoid asset seizure….”

I utterly LOVE that he’s using the very model that corporations have used to evade their responsibilities, globalization, in order to force them to be responsible. That is so rich with irony, I hardly know what to do with it.

In fact, it reminds me of movie/music companies that refer to individuals who exercise their fair use rights to share information, movies, or music as “thieves”. The fact is, they do so less because those people actually are thieves, and more because those companies wish to reserve the right to “thievery/copying” all to themselves. As is exemplified by these wonderful videos:

http://www.everythingisaremix.info/?p=20
http://www.everythingisaremix.info/?p=58

So they can do that, but an independent producer can’t? And instead that artist gets what I like to call “The Sita Treatment”?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvd5JZkUXY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXmy5cr_cV8
http://sitasingstheblues.com/

To quote the great Nina Paley:

What do religious fundamentalists and big media corporations have in common? They believe that they own culture…. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.

Forced to pay crushing licensing fees, many artists are actually blocked from making new works, simply because some part of the new work is derivative. What is virtually never talked about is that these abuses of the concept of “information ownership” are actually serving to STOP new creative works from being born (not to mention blocking how many works re-enter the public domain, thanks to the DMCA). Often copyright-happy lawyers in fact are killing culture, and doing next to nothing to preserve artists rights, while in reality simply protecting parasitical mega-corporations that only exist thanks to artists who themselves refer to the culture at large.

And of course, these same corporate oligarchies think they own information itself too. Indeed, whether we’re talking about film, music or journalism, thanks to monopolistic corporate consolidation rubber-stamped by a compliant government, they ARE the same companies.

So the next time you hear a “mainstream” journalist/talking head in the well-healed, and perhaps too well-”connected” corporate media refer to either Julian Assange as a “terrorist”, or dismissively snear at “bloggers” as engaging in something less than journalism, remember that perhaps the characterization is less than accurate, and may indeed just be the product of jealousy and fear.

Relevant Links:
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6798/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack-against-WikiLeaks
http://wikileaks.ch/IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf
http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/247706,secret-plan-to-kill-wikileaks-with-fud-leaked.aspx
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Booz_Allen_Hamilton
http://crowdleaks.org/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/creators-must-move-beyond-suing-audience
http://www.musicaeninternet.com/courtney-loves-speech/