2011-08-16 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.
- New Cables were released yesterday and today.

06:45 PM Newspaper El Comercio reports on a cable dating from 2006 revealing how then Ecuatorian Presidential candidate Xavier Neira’s visa was revoked by the United States as he was involved in a legal battle against Pfizer.

06:35 PM Hacktivism’s Global Reach: Peter Fein of activist group Telecomix and Gabriella Coleman interviewed on Democracy Now!.

05:50 PM Macbeth is quoted in a cable regarding Dominican Republic’s 2004 Presidential election, titled ‘Balaguer’s ghost’. The passage refers to Joaquin Balaguer’s ‘repeated manipulation of elections to ensure his own continuation’ (he was elected President in three different occasions) in comparison to then president Hipolito Mejia who was trying to lift the constitution ban on reelection and undertook similar efforts to stay in power.

According to the cable, ‘influential, sophisticated business executives’ warned the U.S. Ambassador that if the ruling party PRD (Meija’s Dominican Revolutionary Party) won the 2004 elections there would be ‘civil war’.

04:30 PM A U.S. State Department cable from 2009, shows the United States attempted to stop a shipment of unmanned aerial vehicles that was expected to arrive in Venezuela from Iran, via Turkey.

03:00 PM The winner of WL Central's monthly competition, this time with focus on cable analysis, has been chosen:

"Syria: the canary in the coal mine", authored by JP Orient.

This month's competition will center on 'the root causes of the global economic crisis'. You can read more about it here.

12:30 PM Suelette Dreyfus, who co-authored ‘Undeground’ with Julian Assange will be on Australian tv show Q&A next Monday, 22 August. To send her a question (from within Australia only) please visit Q&A’s website.

10:15 AM Writing for Antiwar, John Glaser raises an important question concerning the upcoming Obama administration executive order aiming to prevent leaks of government information:

why craft an executive order specifically with the purpose of preventing the release of government secrets which have been shown to be safely made public?

We are to be spectators merely of the partisan show put on by PR consultants for public consumption. What the government is actually up to…that’s none of our business.