Analysis

The Department of Administrative Security (DAS) of Colombia was used as a tool for domestic spying on various occasions during the Government of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). For example, #09BOGOTA849 states that, “CTI investigators reportedly found evidence that since 2004, the DAS had a unit dedicated to spying on groups and individuals considered a threat to the GOC. Originally known as the "G-3" group, the unit did not officially exist and reported only to the DAS director or the deputies in charge of intelligence and counterintelligence. "Semana" reported that besides numerous leftist groups and politicians, the G-3 also collected information on Supreme and Constitutional Court magistrates, Colombian Army officials, and their relatives. The unit was disbanded in late 2005 after a similar domestic spying scandal, but the article claims DAS continued domestic spying through the "National and International Group for Observation and Verification" (GONI) set up in 2006.”

The biggest scandal came in 2009 after weekly publication Semana broke the news that DAS had spied on Supreme Court Auxiliary Magistrate Ivan Velazquez and other leading magistrates that were working on a case investigating links between top level officials of GOC and paramilitary leaders. According to #09BOGOTA688, Semana stated that Velazquez “was followed by DAS detectives and may have had as many as 1900 of his calls illegally tapped over two years”. This quickly led to accusations by the Court that the Government of Colombia was trying to cover up its high level connections to right wing terrorist organizations. The Government denied its involvement in the scheme and was then placed under serious pressure to control DAS, to which Ex-President Uribe complied by placing them under the jurisdiction of the Colombian National Police (CNP) as well as by creating an investigative commission that vowed to identify the culprits.

On March 12, 2001, in Colombia, then-president and vice president of Sintramienergetica, were both picked up by men of the the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a terrorist paramilitary force in Colombia that has at this point been mostly dissolved. According to El Espectador, a Colombian newspaper (that has partnered with WikiLeaks), the trade unionist leaders were murdered in Locarno and transported in a van to Orcasita where they were found dead hours after being killed.

Sintramienergetica is a trade union that has workers that do labor for a US company based in Alabama, Drummond Coal. The history between the trade union and the coal giant has been tumultuous. Paramilitary leaders alleged to be responsible for the murders of the two trade unionists have gone on trial with Drummond being accused of handing over a suitcase of money to leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo asking him to help “remove barriers” the union was creating for the company.

Argentina.- Desde hace días comenzaron a tener repercusiones los cables de Wikileaks en Argentina.

El comienzo de la campaña presidencial, es un buen pretexto por parte de los medios de reflotar los mismos.

Para la prensa opositora al gobierno, estos cables le sirven para ridiculizar a los políticos que desfilan asiduamente por la Embajada de los Estados Unidos. Muchos como el jefe de Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, posible candidato de la derecha a la presidencia, golpeó la puerta en su momento de la embajada para que EEUU intervenga en cuestiones de política interna, entre otros.

Ahora es el turno del ministro de Economía, Amadeo Boudou (La Nacion: Proamericano y que no se sepa) en cuya reunión con la embajadora de EEUU en la Argentina Vilma Martínez se habló de posibles negociaciones de la deuda con los holdouts, Fondo Monetario Internacional y el Club de París. Además de que el presidente Barack Obama ponga en agenda una visita al país.

An “open letter” from the ex-Bank of America employee was recently posted on the website Anonymous has been using to share the leaked emails. It appears to be in response to how he was characterized in coverage of the leak.

TechHerald.com has focused on this comment, which he wrote in response to a question from Anonymous on whether he had more emails: “I have to save the rest. I promised a WSJ [Wall Street Journal] reporter in Australia the story back in Jan when the Balboa sale was announced. I also need to keep a few aces for my inevitable years of litigation for what I’m doing.”

Today, Anonymous published a letter from him. It suggests he may not be so focused on profiting off his information after all.

He thumps his chest at Bank of America saying Bank of America continues “to underestimate me.”

“I’ve already read their plan of action against me. Anonymous leaked it for the world to see months ago,” he adds. “While “Anonymous” BofA executives huddle together and cower behind their corporate logo, hoping their corporate name can withstand a greater shitstorm than mine, we’ve both been reading the exact same battle plan. Don’t be fooled by press releases. The HB Gary plan cost a lot of the money from their piggy bank, and they’re not ones to let their own money go to waste.”

He suggests he is not afraid of Bank of America executives or employees who might be plotting against him:

Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreyev, who helped with cleanup in the aftermath of Chernobyl, said on March 16, “The Japanese were very greedy, and they used every square inch of the space. But when you have a dense placing of spent fuel in the basin, you have a high possibility of fire if the water is removed from the basin.” His comments came as Japan faces a growing nuclear disaster with nuclear reactors leaking and radiation plumes discharging into the atmosphere.

Andreyev put the blame on corporations and United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, saying they had “willfully ignor[ed] lessons from the world's worst nuclear accident 25 years ago to protect the industry's expansion.” He condemned the nuclear industry for ensuring Chernobyl was not studied properly.

Japan has been scrambling to contain a nuclear catastrophe ever since an 8.9 earthquake struck last week. As of Wednesday, March 16, a helicopter was unable to drop water on “the most troubled reactor” in the country. Workers left the power plant briefly as radiation levels increased.

In 2007, twelve power companies “admitted to thousands of irregularities in reporting past problems.” Japanese citizens began to resist the building of new nuclear reactors. They pushed for legal actions to suspend operations. Now, US State Cables released by WikiLeaks, which are being published by the Telegraph and The Guardian, further affirm that some sort of coverup has been going on.

Several writers have published their thoughts on the bank employee emails posted by Anonymous. They appear to have been caught up in the news cycle, hoping to get ahead of this story and get the most traffic to their post. In rushing the story, at least a few have committed a basic failure of journalism, one that could easily be remedied by fact checking.

Juli Weiner at VanityFair.com writes, “A-ha! Bank of America is indeed the large United States bank whose internal documents and e-mails were rumored to soon appear on the Internet. But twist! The leaker of those documents was not WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, spectral nuisance and folk hero, but Anonymous, the rabble-rousing hacking collective.”

Angela Orr on Technorati writes, “Alluded to by the Anonymous community for months, leaks of Bank of America documents have finally begun to come to light, as the so-called #BlackMonday Operation began, today.”

And, at ComputerWorld, Darlene Storm writes, “It's unclear whether part one of the bankofamericasucks leak is the same information that BofA was afraid WikiLeaks would publish.”

Actually, it is incredibly clear. Look at the dates: they are all from days ago, the first one being sent out on March 10, 2011. This makes it impossible for Anonymous to be leaking whatever material WikiLeaks happens to hold.

Anonymous, the hacktivist group known for supporting WikiLeaks and mounting actions in cyberspace in defense of freedom of information and transparency, launched “#BlackMonday” at midnight. Emails between an Anonymous user and an employee with Balboa Insurance, whose work is connected to the operations of Bank of America, were posted.

The employee claims to have worked for the company for the last seven years. He writes, “Many of you do not know who Balboa Insurance Group (soon to be rebranded as QBE First by Australian Reinsurance Company QBE according to internal communication sent to all Balboa associates) is, but if you’ve ever had a loan for an automobile, farm equipment, mobile home, or residential or commercial property, we knew you. In fact, we probably charged you money…a lot of money…for insurance you didn’t even need.”

Emails from the employee allegedly affirm suspicions that banks like Bank of America have been engaged in rampant fraud. But, the bigger story here is Anonymous has made contact with an employee at Balboa Insurance and opened up a conduit for getting information out to the world. He appears intent to push others to blow the whistle of Bank of America fraud.

In an email sent on March 11, 2011 at 7:06 pm, the Balboa Insurance employee writes about a key strategic issue that Anonymous faces in its campaign to take down Bank of America for its disingenuous and fraudulent dealings (particularly a campaign that began when the bank announced it would cease to process donations to WikiLeaks).

UPDATE: Unedited podcast is posted.

This week’s guest is Debra Sweet. She is the Director of World Can't Wait, initiated in 2005 to "drive out the Bush regime" by repudiating its program, forcing it from office through a mass, independent movement and reversing the direction it had launched. Based in New York City, she leads World Can't Wait in its continuing efforts to stop the crimes of our government, including the unjust occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture and detention codes, as well as reversing the fascist direction of U.S. society, from the surveillance state to the criminalization of abortion and immigrants.

Her writing can be read here. Her latest piece is “Nakedness, Justice and Bradley Manning.”

To mark the eighth anniversary of the Iraq War, Sweet discusses some of the revelations that have come from WikiLeaks on the Iraq War thanks to Cablegate and the Iraq War Logs and the "Collateral Murder" video.

Sweet addresses how WikiLeaks revelations on the wars are fueling antiwar resistance in America. She will highlight upcoming actions on March 19 and 20 in the United States to oppose ongoing US wars and occupations and to support Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower being held at Quantico Marine Brig in Virginia.

Following Sweet’s interview, some time was spent doing a roundup on some of the past week’s news related to WikiLeaks. The milestone that was reached this week, the 100th Day of Cablegate, was recounted.

To listen to the podcast, click play on the widget below. Or, go to CMN News.

Federal Magistrate Judge Theresa C. Buchanan ruled the “Twitter 3,” who have become ensnared in a WikiLeaks investigation, cannot keep the US government from looking at their Twitter information and the information they would like to be public cannot be disclosed. With support from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jacob Appelbaum, Birgitta Jonsdottir, and Rop Gonggrijp, the three, will appeal the decision.

The “Twitter 3” sought to convince the court the Twitter Order violated First and Fourth Amendment rights. The Court found there was no First Amendment violation because the three had “already made their Twitter posts and associations publicly available.” The Court memo on the decision explains:

The Twitter Order does not seek to control or direct the content of petitioners’ speech or association. Rather, it is a routine compelled disclosure of non-content information which petitioners voluntarily provided to Twitter pursuant to Twitter’s Privacy Policy. Additionally, the Court’s §2703(d) analysis assured that the Twitter Order is reasonable in scope, and the government has a legitimate interest in the disclosures sought.

On the Fourth Amendment argument, the Court finds no “privacy interest” in protecting “IP addresses” and argued, “The Court is aware of no authority finding that an IP address shows location with precision, let alone provides insight into a home’s interior or a user’s movements.”

“The exceptional circumstances and putting the Constitution on hold are no grounds for dictatorship rule or and tyranny,” said Khaled Ali, head of The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) in a statement yesterday. On Thursday, 10 March 2011 ECESR filed a lawsuit against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) on behalf of named plaintiff, journalist Rasha Azeb and others. The lawsuit seeks to put an end to the trial of civilians by military courts. Azeb, who writes for al-Fagr newspaper, was one of six journalist assaulted in Tahrir Square and then taken before a military court.

Formally it is the army, meaning the SCAF that holds power for a 6 month interim period after Mubarak. The real struggle for power that is going on now will determine the success or failure of the Egyptian revolution. This lawsuit is just one small fight in the revolution's many arenas. Much has been accomplished but much remains to be done. Most of the forces that empowered the old regime are still entrenched in the Egyptian military and civilian society and they will coalesce into a new form of the old tyranny if they are not throughly rooted out.

Rep. Peter King of New York, who held the first in a series of hearings on radicalization in the American Muslim community on March 10, has a well-known position on WikiLeaks: It’s terrorism. He urged the Treasury Department in January 2011 “to add WikiLeaks and its founder Jullian Assange to the Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List (SDN List).”

His letter to the Treasury Department explains his opinion, “The U.S. government simply cannot continue its ineffective piecemeal approach of responding in the aftermath of Wikileaks’ damage. The Administration must act to disrupt the Wikileaks enterprise. The U.S. government should be making every effort to strangle the viability of Assange’s organization.”

Presumably, King would like to see WikiLeaks “strangled” in the way that the Committee on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) is being cracked down on by the FBI. King explicitly called for Muslim-Americans to reject CAIR, which he said “was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorist financing case involving the Holyland Foundation.”

In the leadup to this hearing I found it shocking and sad that the mainstream media accepted CAIR’s accusations as if it were a legitimate organization. Thankfully, FBI Director Mueller has ordered the FBI to cease all dealings and contact with CAIR. I would hope that all law enforcement officials would follow the lead of the FBI Director.

[UPDATE - 2010-03-09]

The Middle East Institute has posted video of a US-Libya business relations event that WL Central mentioned previously. The event called "US-Libya Relations: Surviving the WikiLeaks Controversy?" featured two individuals, David Mack and Charles Dittrich, with connections to the US-Libya Business Association.

The person introducing the event in the video (presumably a person with the Middle East Institute which hosted the panel) explains the WikiLeaks cables released on Libya rocked the relationship between the US and Libya. "The US' very able ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, was quoted in secret cables as talking about Muammar Gaddafi's reliance on a voluptuous blond Ukrainian nurse. That did not go down well in Tripoli."

Ambassador Cretz was recalled. But, as Mack says when he gets up to speak, a meeting in mid-December was held between business leaders from the US and Tripoli and there was a willingness to push onward and forget what had been revealed.

Previous post which appeared on 2010-02-22 appears below.

The only people more terrified of the foreign mercenaries or anti-aircraft missiles or the fighter jets deployed to shell protesters than Libyans are the businessmen working for oil and gas companies in Libya. In fact, this whole democracy thing is a nightmare for companies in Libya that fought just over two years ago to ensure the market in Libya would not be restricted by an amendment that aimed to prevent companies from doing business with rogue states designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

Financial Times reports escalating violence in Libya has kept oil prices at two and a half year highs. Many of the oil ports and refineries are now shut down. International oil companies are evacuating their staff from the "world's 12th largest oil exporter."

All the violence, protest and political tension in Libya and the wider Middle East and North Africa seems to have led the US-Libya Business Association to make a cold calculated decision to disappear from the Internet for the time being until calm returns to Libya. RAW STORY reported on February 21 that the website of the US-Libya Business Association (USLBA) went down.

Stories of what happened as Egyptian women protested in Tahrir Square and called for equality and fairness in Egyptian society in honor of International Women’s Day are circulating. Female Egyptians hoped to have a million women march. Unfortunately, only a few hundred women came out to demonstrate and the action turned violent as men disrupted what should have been a peaceful day of celebration.

Christian Science Monitor reports men showed up and shouted, “Go wash clothes!” And said, “You are not married; go find a husband,” and “This is against Islam!” Men suggested women already have enough rights. They argued now was not the time to argue for rights.

Men decided women had been demonstrating for too long and violently scattered the women provoking the military to fire shots in the air. Sexual harassment, which many female Egyptians said during the uprising had disappeared, happened during the “melee.”

Cairo-based reporter and writer Ursula Lindsey reports one “48 year-old accountant” was "horrified by the protesters’ demand that women be allowed to run for the presidency.” He suggested Egyptians would “reject this completely” and added, “Women have a role, and men have a role. We’re used to men ruling. Who rules in my house? My father. And who rules in my family? I do.”

Egyptians stormed Amn Dawla, a State Security building in Nasr City, over the weekend. Protesters were aware that security was burning, shredding and destroying documents that might incriminate State Security officials in any future investigations or pursuits of accountability in the aftermath of the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. They entered the building, started taking photos and video and took some of the documents to scan and post online or hand over to the armed forces so State Security could not be free from justice.

Inspired by WikiLeaks, Amn Dawla Leaks was instantly born. Twitter and Facebook accounts began to circulate the documents. The information, in Arabic, received many requests for English translation. It became clear there was much world interest and many would want to know what was uncovered.

One main revelation that has come out in the first days involves a bombing that up to this point was believed to have been perpetrated by Bedouins or Islamists. In the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, about eighty-eight people were killed.

The document describes three car bombs that are to be detonated at the first entrance of the Movenpick Hotel. The second is to be detonated near the hotel and the third is to be detonated at a hotel in the village of Movenpick. All sites of detonation are intended to damage property owned by Hussein Salem. The bombings are planned for Revolution Day, a day that commemorates Gamal Abdel Nasser’s overthrow of King Farouk in 1952.

*Special thanks to C-Cyte for recording my tweets and posting them online in a post for people to view if they do not normally use Twitter.

One hundred days ago, WikiLeaks began to release the US State Embassy cables. The release event, which continues, became known as Cablegate.

A future post will include a look at Cablegate and what its impact on journalism, international diplomacy, and human rights has been and what its role has been in world events like the uprisings and revolutions the world that are currently unfolding. For now, it is worth recounting what has actually been revealed because of the release.

One common denominator can be found in a majority of the cables: corruption. For all the talk of this country and that country being corrupt and that country being so corrupt it's gone, the plain fact is that between all the countries of the world, perhaps as a result of American coercion and/or threat of force, the world is one corrupt planet.

WikiLeaks has managed to partner with 50 media outlets over the course of the past months. 5,287 of 251,287 cables have been released so far. This not only means there will likely be a 200th, 300th and 400th Day of Cablegate but also means there will be many more revelations to come in the next year.

Manning's Forced Nudity at Quantico and Spanish Guantanamo Investigation Continues; Plus, 100 Days Since Cablegate Began

This week's guest was freelance investigative journalist, author and filmmaker Andy Worthington, who is known for covering Guantanamo Bay prison, torture and the wider "war on terror." [For Worthington's full bio click here.]

 

Worthington discussed the forced nudity that former Pfc. Bradley Manning (the whistleblower alleged to have leaked classified information like the "Collateral Murder" video to WikiLeaks) is being subjected to by the US military at Quantico Brig in Virginia and the 22 additional charges, which the military filed against Manning. [To read Worthington's article on Manning published this week, click
here.] 

 

Worthington also talked about an article he recently published on a Spanish Guantanamo investigation into Bush administration officials' involvement in the torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo. WikiLeaks revelations in the cable that showed US government officials interfered and worked to halt a Spanish investigation have pushed the national court to renew its efforts to bring those involved in torture to justice. And so, Worthington also talked about WikiLeaks' impact so far on helping detainees at Guantanamo get one step closer to justice and acknowledgment of the torture and abuse they experienced.

 

To listen to the podcast, just click play on the widget below. Or, you can go download the .mp3 file here. (Or, find it on iTunes by searching for "CMN News.")

A cable from December 2007 features Gaddafi Development Foundation Executive Director Dr. Yusuf Sawani discussing trans-national terrorism threats and security with US diplomats. The director talks about the fact that a million sub-Saharan African guest workers are resident in Libya and says it should be a “cause of concern.” The workers are a concern because Dr. Sawani believes any of those individuals could possibly commit an act of terrorism. In recent days, many of those guest workers have fled, as Libyans have grown suspicious and attacked a number of black Africans due to reports that Leader Muammar Gaddafi hired “black African mercenaries.”

The latest from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicates 191,000 or more have fled Libya to Egypt, Tunisia and Niger. A previous report estimated around 80,000 Pakistanis, 59,000 Sudanese, 50,000 Bangladeshis, 26,000 Filipinos, 2,000 Nepalese and other African and Asian migrant workers are hosted by the country.

OCHA reports have been tracking the risk of violence migrant workers face. In a March 3 update, OCHA notes, “Sub-Saharan nationals remain at risk of violence from local populations on suspicion of being Government-recruited mercenaries.” A report on March 2 detailed the needs of those fleeing Libya highlights the need for protection. It reads:

Former Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking classified information (specifically a video showing U.S. military in Iraq firing on civilians and two journalists), continues to experience intense solitary confinement in the Quantico Marine Brig in Virginia. The accused military whistleblower, whom the army filed 22 additional charges against days ago, was reportedly stripped naked March 2 of all his clothing and forced to remain in his cell naked for the next seven hours until early in the morning on March 3.


Coombs writes on his blog that a wake-up call was sounded at 5:00 am, "Manning was forced to stand naked at the front of his cell," a Duty Brig Supervisor arrived and Manning "was called to attention," a detainee count was conducted and afterwards Manning was told to sit on his bed, and minutes later his clothing was returned.


This is "degrading treatment," Coombs concludes, that is "inexcusable and without jurisdiction." This is "an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated...No other detainee at the Brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation." But, no other detainee is at the center of a case that US military and government officials seem to have decided to use as an example case that could put in fear in any other military or government official who might seek to disseminate information to any organization like WikiLeaks in the future.

Systematic Corruption ruptures Vietnam with inequality

Since the mid-1980s, the time when Vietnam launched the ‘Doi Moi (industrialization)’ project to boost the national economy, Vietnam has recorded remarkable GDP increase rate, 7 to 8% a year. However, the economic inequality gap and government debts are huge, and show no sign of shrinking.

Primary reasons for the problems lie in the structure of the ‘industrialization’. The only legal political party, the Vietnam Communist Party, utilized state owned enterprises(SOE) as useful tools which enable the government to take a firm grip on the state economy. In a rare thesis discussing the privatization of the Vietnamese economy, Fredrik Sjöholm pointed out that it’s actually a state takeover of economy in disguise of ‘privatization’; about one-quarter of state revenues come from SOEs and the state can take control of any SOEs by having ‘minority state ownership share’(Sjöholm, 2006)

Commonplace collusion between politics and economy, interwoven through shares, squandered bailout money and venal practices in the name of ‘industrialization’, generated astounding breeding ground for corruption and rapidly increasing debts. The ‘industrialization’ process had few constructive plans behind it, which produced obfuscated ownership responsibility while working on ad hoc economic strategies. This opened the door for private, often political, actors to ‘hijack’ the real control of the firms.

Update: Edited podcast episode is now posted. The fourth episode of this weekly podcast, which looks at stories related to WikiLeaks from the past week, featured guest Kevin Zeese, who is with the Bradley Manning Support Network and WikiLeaksIsDemocracy.org, which is a project dedicated to preventing the prosecution and extradition of Assange to the United States. The podcast also welcomed CMN News correspondent Chris Novembrino, who provided commentary throughout the episode.