The WikiLeaks Debacle!

Associated Press, 12.02.10, 05:27 AM EST
STOCKHOLM -- Sweden's Supreme Court has upheld a court order to detain WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual molestation.
The 39-year-old Australian, who denies the accusations made by two Swedish women following his visit to the country in August, had appealed two lower court rulings allowing investigators to bring him into custody and issue an international arrest warrant.


The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected his appeal of the detention order.
WikiLeaks has angered the U.S. and other governments by publishing almost half a million secret documents about U.S. diplomatic relations, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.


source:Swedish court upholds Assange detention order - Forbes.com
 
Wikileaks memo reveals Egypt's Nile fears over Sudan

By Will Ross East Africa correspondent
_50287830_010598279-1.jpg
The waters of the River Nile are a lifeline for Egypt
Continue reading the main story Wikileaks Revelations




A leaked US embassy cable has revealed Egypt's fears about the possibility of its neighbour Sudan breaking into two.
In the cable, written last year, a foreign ministry official urged the US to help postpone a referendum on independence for Southern Sudan.
The official said the creation of "a non-viable state" could threaten Egypt's access to the River Nile.
Cairo's Almasry Alyoum newspaper published the cable, one of thousands being released by Wikileaks.
Southern Sudan is due to vote in a referendum on independence in January.
But in the cable - from the US embassy in Cairo - the official talks of implications should south Sudan secede and concern is expressed about the River Nile - a lifeline for Egypt.
Egypt has in the past threatened to go to war with any country tampering with the Nile.
The official said the creation of "a non-viable state" could threaten Egypt's access to the Nile at a time when several countries are negotiating how to share the river's water.
The official presses the US to help postpone the referendum by four to six years.
Egypt clearly fears a new nation, Southern Sudan, would be more likely to side with the upstream countries of the Nile basin like Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Vital resource Those countries believe a colonial era treaty which guarantees that Egypt receives most of the Nile water is unfair.
Egypt and Sudan are refusing to sign up to a new agreement.
The fact that south Sudan is oil rich is seen as a major reason for tension ahead of the referendum on independence.
However, some argue that the vital water resource is likely to be a far greater bone of contention in the region long after the oil wells have dried up.
Wikileaks has so far released more than 600 of 251,000 classified US diplomatic and military cables.
More on This Story
 
The vital water resources of the Nile as Egypt sees herself as the bonafide owners and utilizers of this water body's waters just corroborate how negotiations between the nile nations have been opaque and loosely worded since colonial times todate. Today we can see how we are subjected to due diligence before the relevant authorities make decisions.
 
capt.01dbce6e828c4e4ca58bd9f415c1462a-01dbce6e828c4e4ca58bd9f415c1462a-0.jpg


AP – FILE - In this March 17, 2010 file photo, a PayPal employee walks past the PayPal logo at the international …

BERLIN – WikiLeaks has lost a major source of revenue after the online payment service provider PayPal cut off its account used to collect donations, saying the website is engaged in illegal activity.

The announcement also came as WikiLeaks is struggling to keep its website accessible after service providers such as Amazon dropped contracts, and governments and hackers continued to hound the organization.

The weekend move by PayPal came as WikiLeaks' release of hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables brought commercial organizations on the Internet that have business ties with the organization under more scrutiny.

WikiLeaks also is under legal pressure in several countries, including the U.S., and a former colleague of founder Julian Assange has said he will launch of a competing platform.

Donating money to WikiLeaks via PayPal was not possible anymore on Saturday, generating an error message saying: "This recipient is currently unable to receive money."

PayPal said in a blog posting that cutting off WikiLeaks' account was prompted by a violation of the service provider's policy, "which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."

The short notice was dated Friday, and a spokeswoman for PayPal Germany declined on Saturday to elaborate and referred to the official blog posting.
WikiLeaks confirmed the latest trouble in its Twitter account, saying: "PayPal bans WikiLeaks after U.S. government pressure."

WikiLeaks has embarrassed Washington and foreign leaders by releasing a trove of brutally frank U.S. diplomatic cables.
PayPal, a subsidiary of U.S.-based online marketplace operator EBay Inc., offers online payment services that are one of several ways WikiLeaks collects donations — and until now was probably the most secure and convenient way to support the organization.

The other options listed on WikiLeaks' website are through mail to an Australian post office box, through bank transfers to accounts in Switzerland, Germany or Iceland, as well as through one "credit card processing partner" in Switzerland.

WikiLeaks' PayPal account redirects users to a German foundation which provides the organization with the money. The Wau Holland Foundation, named after a German hacker, confirmed Saturday in a Twitter message that its PayPal account had been taken down because of the "financial support to WikiLeaks."

The foundation's president, Winfried Motzkus, earlier this week was quoted by the local newspaper Neue Westfaelische in his hometown of Bielefeld as saying that Wau Holland has collected euro750,000 ($1 million) for WikiLeaks, covering the organization's expenses.

WikiLeaks' recent releases seem to have been a boon for the foundation, which had previously described itself as the organization's main financial backer.
On its website, the foundation said "the huge and in this form unique amount of donations has caused the delay of issuing contribution receipts" — which allow Germans to deduct donations from their taxes.

Messages left for the foundation and for Motzkus were not immediately answered.
While WikiLeaks vows to make the world a more transparent place, very little is known about its day-to-day functioning. It has no headquarters, few if any paid staff and its finances remain opaque.

Wau Holland's vice president, Hendrik Heye Fulda, last month told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that WikiLeaks operates on a tight annual budget of about $200,000. Fulda could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Meanwhile, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks' spokesman, has announced plans to launch a new and more transparent platform on his own, German news magazine Focus reported.

It will provide the technical infrastructure for anonymous postings and allow informants to choose themselves how and by whom to publish the information, Focus quoted Domscheit-Berg as saying. The 32-year-old Domscheit-Berg, who also has used the name Daniel Schmitt, said he will soon publish a book about his time with Assange at the website.

On Friday, WikiLeaks was forced to move from one website to another as governments and hackers hounded the organization, trying to deprive it of a direct line to the public.
EveryDNS, a company based in Manchester, New Hampshire, stopped directing traffic to the website wikileaks.org late Thursday, saying cyber attacks threatened the rest of its network.

But while wikileaks.org remained unreachable Saturday, it has found new homes. Its German website wikileaks.de was reachable Saturday, and so was its Swiss domain.
The Swiss address directs traffic to servers in France, where political pressure quickly mounted with Industry Minister Eric Besson on Friday, saying it was unacceptable to host a site that "violates the secret of diplomatic relations."

The web hosting company OVH confirmed that it had been hosting WikiLeaks since early Thursday, after a client asked for a "dedicated server with ... protection against attacks," adding it was now up to the courts to decide on the legality of hosting the site on French soil.

French newspaper Le Monde — which was among the publications that were granted full access to the diplomatic cables beforehand — said in one of its online articles Saturday it could not provide links to the relevant cables "as a result of the computer attacks WikiLeaks has suffered and the refusal of some Internet hosts and countries to take in the site."

Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Saturday condemned the personal attacks on Assange and "the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure" in what it called the first "attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency."

WikiLeaks has been brought down numerous times this week by what appear to be denial-of-service attacks. In a typical such attack, remote computers commandeered by rogue programs bombard a website with so many data packets that it becomes overwhelmed and unavailable to visitors. Pinpointing the culprits is difficult. The attacks

are relatively easy to mount and can be performed by amateurs.
The attacks started Sunday, just before WikiLeaks released the diplomatic cables. To deal with the flood of traffic, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon.com's Web hosting facility.
But Amazon booted WikiLeaks from the site on Wednesday after U.S. congressional staffers started asking the company about its relationship to WikiLeaks.
The U.S. is currently conducting a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks' release of the diplomatic cables.

Source: WikiLeaks loses major source of revenue - Yahoo! News
 
We changed Kenya’s 2007 election results, boasts WikiLeaks founder

http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?u...07 election results, boasts WikiLeaks founder
ico_bookmark.png




Submit Cancel






PIX3.jpg
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s lawyer Bjorn Hurtig (left) meets the media on December 1, 2010 after an international arrest warrant was issued on Sunday against Assange, in a rape investigation. Photo/AFP
By KEVIN J KELLEY Nation CorrespondentPosted Saturday, December 4 2010 at 22:21

New York, Saturday

WikiLeaks’ founder and defenders are pointing to the whistleblowing website’s actions concerning Kenya as proof of its positive role in the world.

Australian Julian Assange, the orchestrator of the slow release of thousands of confidential US diplomatic messages, said in an interview on Friday with London’s Guardian newspaper that WikiLeaks has been having a global impact since 2007 “when it changed the result of the Kenyan General Election.”

Assange has previously claimed that WikiLeaks’ release of the Kroll report on official corruption in Kenya brought about the defeat at the polls of all the politicians named in that leaked document.

Some commentators are also recalling that in 2009, Amnesty International gave Assange a media award for WikiLeaks’ publication of “The Cry of Blood: Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances.”

That report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, which had not previously been available in Kenya, documented the deaths or disappearances of some 500 young Kenyans in a police crackdown.

“The material was important,” Assange told journalism.co.uk in an interview in 2009. “It was difficult to get Western press attention to it. We ran it on our front page for a week. Most journalists didn’t care about it. Even regular (WikiLeaks) readers didn’t care about it.”

But the story was eventually picked up by London’s Sunday

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spent parts of the past few days apologising to the leaders of key countries for unflattering assessments in the documents beginning to be disclosed.

“Last Friday, she talked to China, Germany, France, the UK Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said on Thursday. “On Saturday, she talked to Canada. On Sunday, she talked to China again.”

US officials have also apologised to the Kenyan government for comments by American diplomats that have yet to be made public.

Some countries now appear disinclined to hold candid conversations with US officials, Crowley added. “We anticipate that for a period of time, some government officials that have talked to us freely in the past may be more reluctant,” he told reporters.

A few commentators are suggesting, however, that the cables so far indicate general convergence between stated US policy and what American diplomats say privately. There have yet to be any truly shocking revelations from “Cablegate,” these analysts maintain.

In the case of Kenya, for instance, Der Spiegel reported last week that the cables depict the country as “a swamp of flourishing corruption.” The German weekly added that “almost every single sentence in the embassy reports speaks with disdain of the government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.”
 
WikiLeaks itaendelea kupata mashambulizi kutoka kona za pande zote duniani kutokana na kazi yake nzito ya kutoa taarifa za siri za serikali hadharani.

Mashambulizi haya ambayo yanaanzia kule Marekani ni ama ni moja kwa moja kutoka wizarani mambo ya ndani au kwa mashirika au makampuni makubwa kama Amazon ambao maamuzi yake ya kuondoa "data" hizo kwenye servers zake pia yanaathiri makampuni mengine kama ile ya OVH ya France.

Lakini pia kuna taarifa kwamba shambulizi la DDos dhidi ya website ya WikiLeaks linahusiana na jamaa mmoja ambae ni "hacker" wa kuaminika ambae huwa anatumiwa kushambulia websites ambazo zinahusiana na mambo ya kidini, kwamba ametumika kushambulia WikiLeaks bado zinangoja uthibitisho.

Assange amejitafutia matatizo kwani amechokoza pasipohusika na sasa anawindwa masaa 24. Ikiwa lolote lotatokea kwa bwana Assange yeye amekwishatuma documents zaidi ya 100,000 kwa wapenzi wa website yake ambazo zinaitwa "insurance files" ambazo zinatolewa mara tu Assange atakapokamatwa.

Lakini kampeni hii dhidi ya WikiLeaks na wanachama wake inatishia uhuru wa haki ya kidemokrasia hususan uhuru wa "internet". Hii inaashiria kwamba makampuni makubwa yenye uwezo wa kifwedha na nafasi yana uwezo wa kuhodhi sehemu kubwa ya mtandao wa "internet" hasa sehemu zile muhimu kama kuweza kudhibiti kwa kufunga njia za mtandao huo bila kupingwa.
 
Assange anataka attention thats all. Mimi nadhani ana mental problem pia kama sivyo kuna watu who are behind the whole saga. Ukimwangalia kwanza huwezi kufikiri ana akili ya kujua impact ya hii kitu kwa ulimwengu na si Marekani peke yake. His days are numbered atajua kilichomtoa kanga manyoya lol.
 
Naona tunaongea na kuhoji uwezo wake wa akili na kufikiri bila kumpa jamaa nafasi ya kujieleza mwenyewe - juzi amefanya mahojiano mtandaoni, haya hapa:

Published on Friday, December 3, 2010 by The Guardian/UK Julian Assange Answers Questions in Online Q&A

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is answering readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables. We will post his responses as we receive them



Fwoggie I'll start the ball rolling with a question. You're an Australian passport holder - would you want return to your own country or is this now out of the question due to potentially being arrested on arrival for releasing cables relating to Australian diplomats and polices?
Julian-Assange-WikiLeaks--006_0.jpg
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder. (Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian)
Julian Assange I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return is impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people. This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties. girish89 How do you think you have changed world affairs? And if you call all the attention you've been given-credit ... shouldn't the mole or source receive a word of praise from you?
Julian Assange For the past four years one of our goals has been to lionise the source who take the real risks in nearly every journalistic disclosure and without whose efforts, journalists would be nothing. If indeed it is the case, as alleged by the Pentagon, that the young soldier - Bradley Manning - is behind some of our recent disclosures, then he is without doubt an unparalleled hero.
Daithi Have you released, or will you release, cables (either in the last few days or with the Afghan and Iraq war logs) with the names of Afghan informants or anything else like so? Are you willing to censor (sorry for using the term) any names that you feel might land people in danger from reprisals?? By the way, I think history will absolve you. Well done!!!
Julian Assange WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time there has been no credible allegation, even by organisations like the Pentagon that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our activities. This is despite much-attempted manipulation and spin trying to lead people to a counter-factual conclusion. We do not expect any change in this regard.
distrot The State Dept is mulling over the issue of whether you are a journalist or not. Are you a journalist? As far as delivering information that someone [anyone] does not want seen is concerned, does it matter if you are a 'journalist' or not?
Julian Assange I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time. However, it is not necessary to debate whether I am a journalist, or how our people mysteriously are alleged to cease to be journalists when they start writing for our organisaiton. Although I still write, research and investigate my role is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists.
achanth Mr Assange, have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?
Julian Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules. 1) that the documents not be self-authored; 2) that they be original. However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.
gnosticheresy What happened to all the other documents that were on Wikileaks prior to these series of "megaleaks"? Will you put them back online at some stage ("technical difficulties" permitting)?
Julian Assange: Many of these are still available at mirror.wikileaks.info and the rest will be returning as soon as we can find a moment to do address the engineering complexities. Since April of this year our timetable has not been our own, rather it has been one that has centred on the moves of abusive elements of the United States government against us. But rest assured I am deeply unhappy that the three-and-a-half years of my work and others is not easily available or searchable by the general public.
CrisShutlar Have you expected this level of impact all over the world? Do you fear for your security?
Julian Assange: I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would perform a global role and to some degree it was clear that is was doing that as far back as 2007 when it changed the result of the Kenyan general election. I thought it would take two years instead of four to be recognised by others as having this important role, so we are still a little behind schedule and have much more work to do. The threats against our lives are a matter of public record, however, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a super power.
JAnthony Julian. I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and the protection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.
In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.
My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.
Julian Assange: If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.
cargun Mr Assange, Can you explain the censorship of identities as XXXXX's in the revealed cables? Some critical identities are left as is, whereas some are XXXXX'd. Some cables are partially revealed. Who can make such critical decisons, but the US gov't? As far as we know your request for such help was rejected by the State department. Also is there an order in the release of cable or are they randomly selected? Thank you.
Julian Assange: The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it. The redactions are then reviewed by at least one other journalist or editor, and we review samples supplied by the other organisations to make sure the process is working.
rszopa Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of AWS. Do you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it? Thank you for doing what you are doing.
Julian Assange: Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.
abbeherrera You started something that nobody can stop. The Beginning of a New World. Remember, that community is behind you and support you (from Slovakia). Do you have leaks on ACTA?
Julian Assange: Yes, we have leaks on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a trojan horse trade agreement designed from the very beginning to satisfy big players in the US copyright and patent industries. In fact, it was WikiLeaks that first drew ACTA to the public's attention - with a leak.
people1st Tom Flanagan, a senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister recently stated "I think Assange should be assassinated ... I think Obama should put out a contract ... I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does disappear." How do you feel about this?
Julian Assange: It is correct that Mr. Flanagan and the others seriously making these statements should be charged with incitement to commit murder.
CommonDreams Posted: 12/3/10 9:47 EST - check back for updates

Update I : 11:55 EST
Isopod Julian, why do you think it was necessary to "give Wikileaks a face"? Don't you think it would be better if the organization was anonymous? This whole debate has become very personal and reduced on you - "Julian Assange leaked documents", "Julian Assange is a terrorist", "Julian Assange alledgedly raped a woman", "Julian Assange should be assassinated", "Live Q&A qith Julian Assange" etc. Nobody talks about Wikileaks as an organization anymore. Many people don't even realize that there are other people behind Wikileaks, too. And this, in my opinion, makes Wikileaks vulnerable because this enables your opponents to argue ad hominem. If they convince the public that you're an evil, woman-raping terrorist, then Wikileaks' credibility will be gone. Also, with due respect for all that you've done, I think it's unfair to all the other brave, hard working people behind Wikileaks, that you get so much credit.
Julian Assange: This is an interesting question. I originally tried hard for the organisation to have no face, because I wanted egos to play no part in our activities. This followed the tradition of the French anonymous pure mathematians, who wrote under the collective allonym, "The Bourbaki". However this quickly led to tremendous distracting curiosity about who and random individuals claiming to represent us. In the end, someone must be responsible to the public and only a leadership that is willing to be publicly courageous can genuinely suggest that sources take risks for the greater good. In that process, I have become the lightening rod. I get undue attacks on every aspect of my life, but then I also get undue credit as some kind of balancing force.
tburgi Western governments lay claim to moral authority in part from having legal guarantees for a free press. Threats of legal sanction against Wikileaks and yourself seem to weaken this claim. (What press needs to be protected except that which is unpopular to the State? If being state-sanctioned is the test for being a media organization, and therefore able to claim rights to press freedom, the situation appears to be the same in authoritarian regimes and the west.) Do you agree that western governments risk losing moral authority by attacking Wikileaks? Do you believe western goverments have any moral authority to begin with? Thanks, Tim Burgi Vancouver, Canada
Julian Assange: The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.
rajiv1857 Hi, Is the game that you are caught up in winnable? Technically, can you keep playing hide and seek with the powers that be when services and service providers are directly or indirectly under government control or vulnerable to pressure - like Amazon? Also, if you get "taken out" - and that could be technical, not necessarily physical - what are the alternatives for your cache of material? Is there a 'second line' of activists in place that would continue the campaign? Is your material 'dispersed' so that taking out one cache would not necessarily mean the end of the game?
Julian Assange: The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.
That's it every one, thanks for all your questions and comments. Julian Assange is sorry that he can't answer every question but he has tried to cover as much territory as possible. Thanks for your patience with our earlier technical difficulties.
© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited



 
UK saw Obama Kenya roots as threats to tie




ubmit Cancel


Rating
081279-01-02.jpg

By PATRICK MAYOYO pmayoyo@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Sunday, December 5 2010 at 22:06

Britain feared that the election of Mr Barrack Obama as US president could hurt London’s relations with America because of the way Mr Obama’s grandfather was treated by the British, according to leaked secret diplomatic documents.




Britain feared that its so-called “special relationship” with the US would come under strain because of Mr Obama’s history, his relative youth, which gave him no historical experience with World War II or the US cold war alliance with London.

Britain was also worried about its colonial forces’ treatment of Mr Obama’s grandfather, Mr Hussein Obama who was actually jailed before Kenya gained independence.

Britain’s worries were contained in a cable dated February 9, 2009, which was among more than a quarter of a million secret diplomatic documents leaked by the whistleblower website, Wikileaks.

“The atmospherics surrounding the relationship with the United States are always under intense scrutiny in Britain, but UK media, pundits, and parliamentarians have openly worried over the last several months that the Obama administration might downplay relations with the (Gordon) Brown Government because of a “perfect storm” of factors,” the cable said.

Among them was the Brown Government’s support for Bush administration’s foreign policies and growing US frustration with UK military failings in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The cable notes that although this period of excessive UK speculation about the relationship is more paranoid than usual, “we agree with a senior MP who told us that ultimately, the people who really matter in all this, those who do the serious business, know that where it matters — over defence, security issues, intelligence-sharing — the relationship is deep, ongoing and abiding.

“For many UK pundits, a break in the special relationship will come because of the new US President’s personal history. Several commentators have explored President Obama’s life story to see what it might mean for his approach to the UK.

“His relative youth (which gives him no historical experience of the WW II and Cold War alliance with London), his formative years in the Pacific rather than in Europe, and his Kenyan grandfather’s treatment at the hands of British colonial forces in Kenya (where he was imprisoned) have led many UK commentators to conclude the new President has no “natural” link to the UK, perhaps even an antipathy to the UK, and this will weaken US-UK ties,” the cable indicates.

“The Times correspondent in Washington, summed up this view: “Mr Obama ... has no personal experience of our shared World War II experiences and little of our Cold War alliance.

In his memoir, ‘Dreams from My Father,’ he described his trips to drink ‘tea on the Thames’ before flying away from a Europe that ‘just wasn’t mine’ to discuss his Kenya roots with British passengers who displayed arrogant attitudes to the ‘Godforsaken countries of Africa’.”

Other revelations include what they US thought was the source of missiles used by terrorists against an Israeli airliner in Mombasa in 2002. The attempt to shoot down the plane failed. According to another cable, the missile could have been smuggled into Kenya from Yemen.

The bid to bring down the Arkia jet as it left Moi International Airport with 100 Israeli passengers occurred simultaneously with a bomb attack on Paradise Hotel in Kikambala which killed 15 people, 12 of them Kenyans.

A diplomatic cable dated August 4, 2009, from Mr Stephen Seche, the US ambassador in Yemen, says the chaos of the 1994 civil war resulted in illicit weapons finding their way into Kenya and other countries between 2001 and 2002.

Among these weapons were man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS) and shoulder-launched surface-to-air-missiles (SAMs).

And another cable, dated February 11, 2010, reveals how Kenya’s ambassador to China, Mr Julius Sunkuli, told US officials that African countries were suspicious of US-China development cooperation.

There are 1,821 cables from the US embassy in Nairobi covering the period 1996 to February this year and whose contents has been described as “unpleasant” and explosive. None of the Nairobi cables has been released so far.

The cables contain the analyses of US embassy officials on the issues and personalities in countries to which they are accredited.

Those who have seen the cables have reported that every page is “dripping with disdain” for the coalition government and quotes an embassy official describing Kenya as a “flourishing swamp of corruption”.
 
Play Video AP – WikiLeaks server goes down, Swiss say


Related Quotes Symbol Price Change ^DJUSS 529.90 +1.59 ^IXIC 2,594.92 +3.46 ^IXK 1,348.18 +1.50


AFP/File – WikiLeaks web page featuring its founder Julian Assange. A Swedish prosecutor handling rape allegations …


By SYLVIA HUI and JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Sylvia Hui And John Heilprin, Associated Press – Mon Dec 6, 6:37 pm ET
LONDON – Julian Assange's lawyer was arranging to deliver the WikiLeaks founder to British police for questioning in a sex-crimes investigation of the man who has angered Washington by spilling thousands of government secrets on the Internet.
Lawyer Mark Stephens told reporters in London that the Metropolitan Police had called him to say they had received an arrest warrant from Sweden for Assange. Assange has been staying at an undisclosed location in Britain.
"We are in the process of making arrangements to meet with police by consent," Stephens said Monday, declining to say when Assange's interview with police would take place.
The 39-year-old Australian is accused of rape and sexual molestation in Sweden, and the case could lead to his extradition. He has denied the accusations, which Stephens has said stem from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex." The lawyer has said the Swedish investigation has turned into a "political stunt."
The pressure on WikiLeaks mounted from other quarters Monday: Swiss authorities closed Assange's bank account, depriving him of a key fundraising tool. And WikiLeaks struggled to stay online despite more hacker attacks and resistance from world governments, receiving help from computer-savvy advocates who have set up hundreds of "mirrors" — or carbon-copy websites — around the world.
In one of its most sensitive disclosures yet, WikiLeaks released on Sunday a secret 2009 diplomatic cable listing sites around the world that the U.S. considers critical to its security. The locations include undersea communications lines, mines, food suppliers, manufacturers of weapons components, and vaccine factories.
Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan called the disclosure damaging and said it gives valuable information to the nation's enemies.
"This is one of many reasons why we believe WikiLeaks' actions are irresponsible and dangerous," Lapan said.
WikiLeaks has been under intense international scrutiny over its disclosure of a mountain of classified U.S. cables that have embarrassed Washington and other governments. U.S. officials have been putting pressure on WikiLeaks and those who help it, and is investigating whether Assange can be prosecuted under espionage law.
In what Assange described as a last-ditch deterrent, WikiLeaks has warned that it has distributed a heavily encrypted version of some of its most important documents and that the information could be instantly made public if the staff were arrested.
For days, WikiLeaks has been hounded by governments, hackers and companies that have forced it to move from one website to another. WikiLeaks is now relying on a Swedish host. But WikiLeaks' Swedish servers were crippled after coming under suspected attack again Monday, the latest in a series of such assaults.
It was not clear who was organizing the attacks, but WikiLeaks has blamed previous ones on intelligence forces in the U.S. and elsewhere.
WikiLeaks' huge online following of tech-savvy young people has pitched in, setting up more than 500 mirrors.

"There is a whole new generation, digital natives, born with the Internet, that understands the freedom of communication," said Pascal Gloor, vice president of the Swiss Pirate Party, whose Swiss Web address, wikileaks.ch, has been serving as a mainstay for WikiLeaks traffic.

"It's not a left-right thing anymore. It's a generational thing between the politicians who don't understand that it's too late for them to regulate the Internet and the young who use technology every day."

Meanwhile, the Swiss postal system's financial arm, Postfinance, shut down a bank account set up by Assange to receive donations after the agency determined that he provided false information regarding his place of residence in opening the account. Assange had listed his lawyer's address in Geneva.
"He will get his money back," Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty said. "We just close the account."

Assange's lawyers said the account contained about $41,000. Over the weekend, the online payment service PayPal cut off WikiLeaks and, according to his Assange's lawyers, froze $80,000 of the organization's money.
The group is left with only a few options for raising money now — through a Swiss-Icelandic credit card processing center and accounts in Iceland and Germany.
Monday marked the first day that WikiLeaks did not publish any new cables. It was unclear whether that had anything to do with the computer attacks.
____
John Heilprin contributed to this story from Geneva. Associated Press Writers Anne Flaherty and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington, Raphael G. Satter in London and Malin Rising in Stockholm also contributed.

Source: Assange may surrender to British police - Yahoo! News
 
-- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in London, CNN confirms.
 
Malyamungu said:
as per warrant issued to Scotland yard by sweedish police.
Click to expand...
<br />
<br />

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates Court later today following arrest in London
 
AP – FILE - In this Oct. 23, 2010 file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaks during a news conference …

By RAPHAEL SATTER, Associated Press
LONDON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to London police on Tuesday as part of a Swedish sex-crimes investigation, the latest blow to an organization that faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange was due at Westminster Magistrate's Court later Tuesday. If he challenges his extradition to Sweden, he will likely be remanded into custody or released on bail until another judge rules on whether to extradite him, a spokeswoman for the extradition department said on customary condition of anonymity.

Since beginning to release the cables last week, WikiLeaks has seen its bank accounts canceled, its web sites attacked and the U.S. government launch a criminal investigation, saying the group has jeopardized national security and diplomatic efforts around the world. It has also seen supporters come to its aid by setting up over 500 mirror sites around the world.

The legal troubles for Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, stem from allegations leveled against him by two women he met while in Sweden over the summer. Assange is accused of rape and sexual molestation in one case and of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in another.

Assange denies the allegations, which his British attorney Mark Stephens says stem from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex." Assange and Stephens have suggested that the prosecution is being manipulated for political reasons.

A spokesman for WikiLeaks called Assange's arrest an attack on media freedom and said it won't prevent the organization from releasing more secret documents.
"This will not change our operation," Kristinn Hrafnsson told The Associated Press.
WikiLeaks has angered the U.S. government by releasing tens of thousands of secret U.S. military documents, followed by the ongoing release of what it says will eventually be a quarter-million cables from U.S. diplomatic posts around the world. It provided those documents to five newspapers, which have been working with WikiLeaks to edit the cables for publication.

The campaign against WikiLeaks began with an effort to jam the website as the cables were being released. U.S. Internet companies Amazon.com, Inc., EveryDNS and PayPal, Inc. then severed their links with WikiLeaks in quick succession, forcing it to jump to new servers and adopt a new primary Web address — wikileaks.ch — in Switzerland.
Swiss authorities closed Assange's bank account Monday, and MasterCard has pulled the plug on payments to WikiLeaks, according to technology news website CNET. A European representative for the credit card company didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

The attacks appeared to have been at least partially successful in stanching the flow of secrets: WikiLeaks has not published any new cables in more than 24 hours, although stories about them have continued to appear in The New York Times and Britain's The Guardian, two of the newspapers given advance access to the cables.
WikiLeaks' Twitter feed, generally packed with updates, appeals, and pithy comments, has been silent since Monday night, when the group warned that Assange's arrest was imminent.
 
tatizo ni kwamba kosa linaloongelewa hapa ni "kubaka", lakinni yale Ma-Leak wameshindwa kuyatengenezea kesi!
 
Cheki moja kati ya mikwara aliyoitoa Bw. Assange..!

...In a warning to Swedish and U.S. authorities, however, Stephens said this weekend that his client was prepared to retaliate if charged. He said Assange might release the secret code - with a 256-bit encryption key - of a massive file quietly distributed this summer that contains thousands of un-redacted documents...

US na EU countries wanahaha sana sasa hivi..!
 
Yaani wasivyopenda ukweli, muda wote alikuwa huru hawakuleta mashata sasa kaleta habari za kuwalipua ndo wanatwambia eti kabaka, msijeshangaa wanamnyonga wasivyo na utu!
 
Huyu jamaa natamani tumpe Uraia Tanzania atatusaidia sana kwenye juhudi zetu za kupambana na mafisadi papa kwa kutoa nyaraka zote za siri zinazowahusu mafisadi wa nje na ndani ya nchi wanayotafuna rasilimali za watanzinia. Kick backs zote tungezijua kwa usahihi zaidi, sijui PCCB na Fisadi Hoseah wangetuangaliaje watanzania!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar Discussions

Back
Top Bottom
Forums
New posts
Post thread
Back