tagged w/ wikileaks news
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It's supposed to be sunny on Saturday in Washington, which is good news for Daniel Ellsberg. The most famous whistle-blower in American history is hoping to get arrested in the name of Bradley Manning.
"Oh, it's easy. I've done it before," he explains. "You don't have to do much to get arrested at the White House."
A spry 79-year-old with neat, silver hair, Ellsberg doesn't look threatening. But he's pretty mad. Disgusted is the word he uses to describe how he feels that Manning, a 23-year-old Army private, has been locked up for nearly eight months at Quantico military prison.
Charged with 34 counts, including "aiding the enemy," Manning faces life in prison and maybe execution. He is accused of illegally downloading hundreds of thousands of secret military and State Department documents and giving it to WikiLeaks.
To many Americans, Manning is a traitor. To many Americans, Manning is a hero.
To Ellsberg, Manning is something else.
"I was that young man; I was Bradley Manning," he says.
In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official. He was a former Marine commander who believed the American government was the good guy. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg got access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.
The Pentagon Papers, as they became known, also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The New York Times, which published them in 1971.
Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy, and he went to trial facing 115 years.
"I was willing to go to prison," Ellsberg says. "I never thought, for the rest of my life, I would ever hear anyone willing to do that, to risk their life, so that horrible, awful secrets could be known. Then I read those logs and learned Bradley was willing to go to prison. I can't tell you how much that affected me."It's supposed to be sunny on Saturday in Washington, which is good news for... more
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The Japanese government has said it is doing all it can to contain the crisis at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which was critically damaged in last week's earthquake. But according to U.S. diplomatic papers released by WikiLeaks, that atomic disaster might have been avoided if only the government had acted on earlier safety warnings.
An unnamed official from the International Atomic Energy Agency is quoted in a 2008 cable from the American embassy in Tokyo as saying that a strong earthquake would pose a "serious problem" for Japan's nuclear power stations. The official added that the country's nuclear safety guidelines were dangerously out of date, as they had only been "revised three times in the last 35 years."
Following that warning, Japan's government pledged to raise security at all of its nuclear facilities, reports The Daily Telegraph, which published the cable. But questions are now being asked about whether authorities really took the nuclear watchdog's worries seriously.
A new emergency response center was built at the Fukushima power plant. However, that facility was only designed to withstand 7.0-magnitude tremors. Friday's seismic activity measured 9.0, and the plant has been rocked by three explosions in the past five days. It is now believed that the containment system around one of Fukushima's reactors has cracked, allowing radioactive steam to escape into the atmosphere.
Other documents published by WikiLeaks also shine a light on Japan's seemingly relaxed approach to nuclear safety. A 2006 cable from the Tokyo embassy detailed how a district court ordered a nuclear plant shut down in western Japan "due to safety concerns over its ability to withstand powerful earthquakes."
The judge argued that local people might suffer radiation poisoning if there was a quake-caused accident at the Shika plant. That power station was only built to survive a 6.5-magnitude earthquake, in line with outdated regulations written two decades earlier.
However, the country's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency didn't share those concerns, the cable reports. It argued that "the reactor is safe and that all safety analyses were appropriately conducted." And in 2009, the high court overturned the closure order and declared that the reactor's safety measures satisfied "the government's quake resistance guidelines."
Rest of article at link....along with other links of the story....
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/16/wikileaks-japan-was-warned-about-nuclear-plant-safety-cables-s/The Japanese government has said it is doing all it can to contain the crisis at... more
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US state department spokesman PJ Crowley has resigned after calling the treatment of the man accused of leaking secret cables to Wikileaks "stupid".
"Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation," Mr Crowley said.
Crowley was speaking to an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about new media and foreign policy when he made the controversial remarks.
He was asked by a participant about the "the elephant in the room" - Wikileaks - and, in the questioner's words, "torturing a prisoner in a military brig".
Mr Crowley said he believed Mr Manning's treatment was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid".
He said his comments were on the record, though he later added that they were his own opinion.
President Barack Obama later insisted he had received assurances that the terms of Pte Manning's confinement were "appropriate".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12728315US state department spokesman PJ Crowley has resigned after calling the treatment of... more
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The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti reports that Duane R. Clarridge, who parted with the Central Intelligence Agency over twenty years ago, has been running a private network of spies from his poolside at his home near San Diego. Clarridge has “fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class.”
http://ramanan50.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/former-cia-spy-runs-private-spy-ring-in-afghanistan-wiki-leaks/The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti reports that Duane R. Clarridge, who parted... more
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By RAPHAEL G. SATTER
Associated Press
LONDON (AP) -- U.S. officials have issued a subpoena to demand details about WikiLeaks' Twitter account, the group announced Saturday, adding that it suspected other American Internet companies were also being ordered to hand over information about its activities.
In a statement, WikiLeaks said U.S. investigators had gone to the San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. to demand the private messages, contact information and other personal details of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other supporters, including the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of handing classified information to the site and a high-profile Icelandic parliamentarian.
WikiLeaks blasted the court order, saying it amounted to harassment.
"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," Assange said in the statement.
A copy of the court order, dated Dec. 14 and posted to Salon.com, said the information sought was "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation" and ordered Twitter not to disclose its existence to Assange or any of the others targeted.
The order was unsealed "thanks to legal action by Twitter," WikiLeaks said.
Twitter has declined comment on the claim, saying only that its policy is to notify its users, where possible, of government requests for information.
Others named in the order include Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private suspected of being the source of some of WikiLeaks' material, as well as Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic lawmaker and one-time WikiLeaks collaborator known for her role in pioneering Iceland's media initiative - which aims to make the North Atlantic island nation a haven for free speech.
The U.S. is also seeking details about Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and U.S. programmer Jacob Appelbaum, both of whom have previously worked with WikiLeaks.
Assange has promised to fight the order, as has Jonsdottir, who said in a Twitter message that she had "no intention to hand my information over willingly." Appelbaum, whose Twitter feed suggested he was traveling in Iceland, said he was apprehensive about returning to the U.S.
"Time to try to enjoy the last of my vacation, I suppose," he tweeted.
more at LINK - - -
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WIKILEAKS?SITE=NVREN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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http://hosted.ap.org/photos/5/5c409645-58e0-4d3a-a794-fa07f470e992-small.jpgBy RAPHAEL G. SATTER
Associated Press
LONDON (AP) -- U.S. officials have issued a... more
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WikiLeaks' Twitter account details have been subpoenaed by U.S. officials, the secret-spilling site announced Saturday, adding that it suspected other American Internet companies were also being asked to hand over information about its activities.
In an e-mail statement, WikiLeaks said that U.S. investigators had gone to the San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. to demand the private messages, contact information and other personal details of founder Julian Assange and others linked to WikiLeaks - including the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of handing classified information to the site and a high-profile Icelandic parliamentarian.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/International/78318WikiLeaks' Twitter account details have been subpoenaed by U.S. officials, the... more
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Wikileaks Exposes Monsanto GMOs - U.S. Conspired To Retaliate Against Any Nations, If They Resisted GMOs
Wikileaks continues to rock the political world by shedding light on conspiracies, corruption and cover-ups. The latest batch of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks reveals what can only be characterized as a U.S.-led conspiracy to force GMOs onto European countries by making those countries pay a steep price if they resist.Wikileaks Exposes Monsanto GMOs - U.S. Conspired To Retaliate Against Any Nations, If... more
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It is being reported that China has blocked access to WikiLeaks. This leaves Wikileaks inaccessible in China which comes only days after the website released thousands of ...
http://bit.ly/e6KNumIt is being reported that China has blocked access to WikiLeaks. This leaves Wikileaks... more
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The U.S. and Washington hold grave fears about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and Arab leaders are privately urging an attack on Iran, according to reports based on classified U.S. embassy cables leaked to major media news organizations by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
The first tranche of more than 250,000 classified cables also says American officials were also told to spy on the United Nations’ leadership and get biometric information on its secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
These revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches, which were obtained by WikiLeaks also reveal Washington’s evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.
These include a shift in relations between China and North Korea, high-level concerns over Pakistan’s growing instability, and details of clandestine U.S. efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.
The UK’s The Guardian also reports U.S. diplomats had been ordered by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to spy on allies, including the UN. Top secret cables revealed that Mrs Clinton even ordered diplomats to obtain DNA data – including iris scans and fingerprints – as well as credit card and frequent flier numbers.
All permanent members of the security council – including Russia, China, France and the UK – were targeted by the secret spying mission, as well as the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon.
Work schedules, email addresses, fax numbers, website identifiers and mobile numbers were also demanded by Washington. The US also wanted ‘biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives.’
The request could break international law and threatens to derail any trust between the U.S. and other powerful nations.
More: http://www.theblogismine.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks-saudi-arabia-asked-the-united-states-to-bomb-iran/The U.S. and Washington hold grave fears about the security of Pakistan’s... more
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The documents released by WikiLeaks show that the country was not allowed on Afghanistan issues related meeting intentionally.The documents released by WikiLeaks show that the country was not allowed on... more
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