Secret Leaked Video of Petraeus Outburst

Old news is not good news

Today, Wikileaks tweeted:

Here's the BBC article:

Sweden has cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on accusations of rape and molestation.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said the chief prosecutor had come to the decision that Mr Assange was not suspected of rape but did not give any further explanation.

The warrant was issued late on Friday.

Wikileaks, which has been criticised for leaking Afghan war documents, had quoted Mr Assange as saying the claims were "without basis".

That message, which appeared on Twitter and was attributed directly to Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations "at this moment is deeply disturbing".

It certainly looks very suspicious that the warrant was cancelled without any explanation.

That's until you realise this article is from fucking August 2010. Why Wikileaks is promoting this outdated story now, and trying to trick people into thinking Sweden has again dropped the charges is questionable.

Personally I think such manipulation doesn't do Assange's case any favours.

Unlawful to arrest Assange in Ecuador's embassy

Yesterday, The Guardian reported:

At a press conference on Wednesday, Patiño released details of a letter he said was delivered through a British embassy official in Quito, the capital of the South American country.

The letter said: "You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the embassy."

It added: "We need to reiterate that we consider the continued use of the diplomatic premises in this way incompatible with the Vienna convention and unsustainable and we have made clear the serious implications that this has for our diplomatic relations."

The Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, actually states that the Secretary of State can only remove a foreign states land rights with consideration to public safety, to national security or to town and country planning. It would be far fetched indeed to argue that Assange was a threat to any of these things.

Under that act, they cannot enter and arrest people in Foreign Embassy's without the consent of the Secretary of State, and that consent must adhere to international law. The British simply do not have the lawful right to undertake what they've threatened to do. But the real kicker is this:

In the event of the severance of consular relations between two States:

(a) the receiving State shall, even in case of armed conflict, respect and protect the consular premises, together with the property of the consular post and the consular archives;

[...]

“The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity.”

That means if the UK decides to sever relations with Ecuador, remove it's land rights as a sovereign nation and effectively close the embassy, Ecuador has the right to choose another state to represent and look after their embassy. It would still be unlawful for the British to enter the premises and arrest Assange, because he is not a threat to public safety.

The act does however talk about priority search provisions, but these are specific to Northern Ireland and have no bearing on this unprecedented case.

Likewise the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (PDF) simply talks about cooperation between states and how Embassy's should generally function. Nowhere does it confer power to Britain to invade another countries embassy, even in times of war:

The States Parties to the present Convention, affirming that the rules of customary international law should continue to govern questions not expressly regulated by the provisions of the present Convention, have agreed as follows: The establishment of diplomatic relations between States, and of permanent diplomatic missions, takes place by mutual consent.

In my opinion this means the British are not allowed to undertake any action at the Ecuadorian embassy without their prior consent, and if they move to close the embassy by removing its land rights, they still need the permission of the foreign state that Ecuador appoints to look after their embassy.

The British would be causing a serious indignity to Ecuador if they did storm the place, and not only breach their own laws, but international law as well. This would destroy good relations, and could be viewed as an act of war, which puts into perspective just how stupid the threats were to begin with.

Bradley Manning nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Yesterday, CityBeat reported:

Some U.S. progressives are supporting a move by Icelandic politicians to nominate alleged WikiLeaks collaborator Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Manning was nominated for the prestigious prize by The Movement of Icelandic Parliament, a group of politicians in Iceland dedicated to empowering grassroots activism.

In its letter nominating Manning, the group wrote, “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.”

There are far too many people willing to blindly follow orders and allow atrocities to be committed without question... but thankfully there are also people like Bradley Manning.

Bradley Manning has changed the world by leaking documents that show the United States trying to cover up crimes against humanity. In highlighting these crimes, Bradley Manning has swayed public opinion against the so-called wars on terror that have claimed millions of innocent lives.

Instead of labelling Bradley Manning a criminal, he should be thought of as a hero that stood up against tyranny and injustice. The flow on effects of his justified actions have undoubtedly saved countless lives.

Assange TV on RT

Wikileaks Needs You!

Corporate Media

Yesterday, Wikileaks reported that the US government had demanded Wikileaks destroy all files about them:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told a media summit that the US government has ordered him to destroy all the material WikiLeaks holds on them – published and unpublished - and to stop using government insiders to gather fresh material. 

“[When we released our documents] the Pentagon said we must destroy everything we published and were going to publish,” Assange said. ”And if we didn’t, we would be ‘compelled to do so,’” the summit’s website says. 

Assange made the allegation as he addressed the News 2011 Summit in Hong Kong via Skype. News executives and media owners from over 80 countries have gathered there to discuss editorial principles and tools as well as business models for the news media. Reports say Assange has been under police pressure to stop talking – exactly the kind of oppressive official action he has been working to highlight. 

He was met with a storm of applause from journalists as he appeared on the screen. 

Speaking about modern journalism, Assange claimed it was facing crisis of a legitimacy today and accused the mainstream press of corruption and bias.

Julian Assange is right! Many mainstream media reporters are biased, mainly because of who pays their wages. However the difficulty is that some journalists are not corrupt and therefore it needs to be said that they undertake a credible role in reporting the truth.

Unfortunately factual reporting has been declining worldwide over the last few years... and especially in New Zealand. The continued underreporting of many important issues just one indicator that New Zealand's mainstream media and their watchdogs are biased.

Here's Goerge Monbiot on the media:

So the rightwing papers run endless exposures of benefit cheats, yet say scarcely a word about the corporate tax cheats. They savage the trade unions and excoriate the BBC. They lambast the regulations that restrain corporate power. They school us in the extrinsic values – the worship of power, money, image and fame – which advertisers love but which make this a shallower, more selfish country. Most of them deceive their readers about the causes of climate change. These are not the obsessions of working people. They are the obsessions thrust upon them by the multimillionaires who own these papers. 

The corporate media is a gigantic astroturfing operation: a fake grassroots crusade serving elite interests. In this respect the media companies resemble the Tea Party movement, which claims to be a spontaneous rising of blue-collar Americans against the elite but was founded with the help of the billionaire Koch brothers and promoted by Murdoch's Fox News.

I totally agree with him. So what are we going to do about it?

Wikileaks Traitor - Daniel Domscheit-Berg

After Daniel Domscheit-Berg was suspended in August 2010, he went about destroying leaked documents held by the well known whistle-blower site Wikileaks.

Perhaps the falling out with Assange had something to do with Domscheit-Berg, while still working for Wikileaks, setting up a rival website called OpenLeaks. At a Chaos Computer Club event in August 2011, he announced its preliminary launch and invited hackers to test the security of the system.

Because of this, the Chaos Computer Club criticized Domscheit-Berg for exploiting the good name of the club to promote his OpenLeaks project and expelled him forthwith.

Domscheit-Berg's motivation to promote his website seems to have no moral bounds. But I think there's more to his sabotage of Wikileaks than just unhealthy competition and self promotion.

Although Domscheit-Berg has claimed that he destroyed the data because he was protecting sources from being compromised, a belief that he has an ulterior motive for his sabotage is also held by Assange, who claims Domscheit-Berg wаs іn contact wіth the FBI аnd iѕ assisting the US investigation іnto Wikileaks.

The main issue here though is that the documents reportedly destroyed are of significant public importance. Wikileaks has confirmed that Domscheit-Berg deleted 5 gigabytes of data relating to the Bank of America, the internal communications of 20 neo-Nazi organisations and US intercept information for "over a hundred internet companies," destroyed videos of a major US atrocity in Afghanistan and data relating to the entire US no-fly list.

But it's not just Domscheit-Berg who has been criticized. Wikileaks has had a plethora of abuse for not ensuring the data was secure. If reports that Domscheit-Berg repeatedly tried to blackmail Wikileaks, then hopefully the data still exists. In some cases, the leaked information will still be held by the initial source, so could presumably be recovered. However the added cost in time and danger is significant.

In terms of Domscheit-Berg's conduct, it's a clear case of sabotage aimed at destroying Wikileaks. They've reported that Domscheit-Berg threatened tо make available private communications, tо forces that oppose Wikileaks. Although the details are still unresolved, Domscheit-Berg has ultimately damaged his own credibility, and I presume his online persona and undertakings will be short lived.



Negotiations with the former volunteer ended because the mediator believes Domscheit-Berg is untrustworthy. A belief held with good reason... In his book written about his time at Wikileaks and the eventual falling out with Julian Assange, Domscheit-Berg confesses to various acts of sabotage against the Wikileaks organization, admiting to having damaged the sites primary submission system and stolen material.

In a statement put out on 20 Aug, Wikileaks makes it's case:

Mr. Domscheit-Berg has acted dishonestly, he has admitted to stealing WikiLeaks property, and has admitted to the deliberate sabotage of Wikileaks’ operations, impeding it from carrying out the will of its sources. He has lied, constantly, and flagrantly, to the public, to us, to our lawyers, and to the mediator, Andy Müller-Maguhn. 

I really do hope Wikileaks can survive Domscheit-Berg's despicable conduct as well as an unlawful Washington instigated financial blockade enforced by the big US financial companies, a prime suspect in the leaking of the Afghan war files, Bradley Manning being imprisoned pending trial, Julian Assange under house arrest pending extradition, and over 100 WikiLeaks supporters arrested and/or raided. The world would be worse off without them.

The week that was 7 - 13 May

Just as the protest flotilla headed back to the Raukumara Basin, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras announced that it had finished oil exploration work and their exploration vessel had left the North Island's eastern coast. The company says its seismic survey work ended last Friday. Petrobras was going to be exploring for oil from between 45 to 60 days, however they ended the exploration after only 32 days.

The exploration in the Raukumara Basin has been met with protest’s by Greenpeace and local iwi since it started. The National Government has not released figures to show the cost of Police, Navy and Airforce intervention in the protest.


A large contingent of protesters failed to disrupt the National party’s regional conference in Gisborne over the weekend, despite efforts to raise as much noise as possible about the Petrobras oil exploration off the East Coast. The protest was aimed at coinciding with John Key’s arrival to speak at the party’s dinner function, but protesters did not spot Mr Key as he jogged past them in Customhouse Street before the dinner, trailed by his minders.

Mr Key dismissed some of the issues they raised, saying there was no evidence to suggest that the work of Petrobras would have any impact on sea life. He had met with Ngati Porou and Whanau Apanui representatives last week and “they had reiterated they were not opposed to progress or mining but wanted reassurance that it be done in a way that was environmentally sustainable.” Key said. This has been shown to be untrue.

15 people have been granted leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, to argue for a jury trial. On the 9th Dec last year, Auckland High Court judge Winkelman had ordered that a trial was to be heard by a single judge. She originally suppressed all of her judgement, but that order was varied in a minute released on 21st December. Police raided 300 houses and initially arrested 18 people in the Operation 8 raids of Oct 15th 2007, which were implemented under New Zealands anti terrorism laws. However Solicitor-General David Collins ruled against continuing under that legislation. The fifteen defendants now face firearms charges with five of them facing charges of participating in an organised criminal group. 95% of all judge alone cases result in convictions.


The Greenland government has officially granted permits to the Scottish company, Cairn Energy, to begin new oil drilling in the Arctic environment, Ben Ayliffe from Greenpeace said:

"The approval of these permits means that this summer oil drilling off the pristine Greenland coast will happen further north, at greater depths and deeper into the winter months than ever before. But despite the significantly greater risks that the government of Greenland is taking with its fragile environment, Cairn Energy has given no indication that it will take extra precautions to prevent an accident like the one that happened in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Instead this relatively inexperienced company is keeping its oil spill emergency plan hidden from the public."

Protesters are being blamed for the interference of explosives set by a seismic survey team for petroleum prospectors in Taranaki. A seismic survey contractor for Todd Energy buried a chain of explosive charges 20 metres deep Mt Taranaki and the western coast, but returned to find detonator wires cut and reburied. Contracting company BTW says lives were put at risk and it suspects the group Climate Justice Taranaki, which last year promised direct action against drilling. However Urs Signer, spokesperson for Climate Justice Taranaki said campaigners are not responsible for disarming the explosives.


His Royal Highness Prince Charles spoke about sustainable food production at the Future of Food conference in Gaston Hall this week.

"It is surely time to grasp one of the biggest nettles of all and re-assess what has become a fundamental aspect of our entire economic model. Responding to the problems we have with a ‘business as usual' approach… offers us only short-term relief," the Prince of Wales said to an audience of about 700 students, professors, policymakers, industry leaders, guests and panelists. "We cannot possibly maintain the approach in the long-term if we continue to consume our planet as rapaciously as we are doing," he said.

He emphasized that the challenging circumstances of the 21st century, waning fresh water resources, soil depletion, increased droughts and floods and a continued reliance on fossil fuels among others, make it impossible to continue to produce food responsibly under the current model.

"If we do not work within nature's system, then nature will fail to be the durable, continuously sustaining force she has always been. … We have to maintain a supply of healthy food at affordable prices when there is mounting pressure on nearly every element affecting the process." Charles said.

After the most tornadoes ever experienced causing extensive damage and many deaths in America, mother nature is once again showing its power with the Mississippi River flooding reaching nearly 48 feet on Tuesday. This soaked low-lying areas with enough water to require a massive cleanup.  In states downstream, farmers built homemade levees to protect their crops and engineers diverted water into a lake to ease the pressure on levees around New Orleans. Inmates in Louisiana's largest prison were also evacuated to higher ground. The Memphis crest is below the record of 48.7 feet recorded during a devastating 1937 flood.

Beekeepers fear an alarming phenomenon that is wiping out bees and leading to reduced food crops around the world has reached New Zealand. Colony collapse disorder has caused American beekeepers to report losses of up to 90 per cent in some cases, prompting fears of crop shortages.

Honeybees are the planet's most effective pollinators, and industry leaders in New Zealand are calling for an investigation into the problem. National Beekeepers Association joint chief executive Daniel Paul said reports coming in to the group were causing concern. In the past six months, it had received reports of significant bee losses – up to 30 per cent in some places. The reports had come from both islands, with big losses in Canterbury and Poverty Bay.

The value of bees to the economy is estimated at about $4 billion a year because of New Zealand's reliance on fruit, vegetable, dairy and meat, and fibre exports, all of which rely to some extent on pollination by bees.

Concern has arisen about a new family of insecticides called neonicotinoids, which are used to coat seeds and control pests. They are neurotoxins and are believed to interfere with a bee's nervous system. Association vice-president Barry Foster said international studies had shown neonicotinoids induced chronic mortality in bees.

In yet another horror story of people fleeing Libya in order to stay alive, dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and NATO military units ignored their cries for help. The recent political turmoil and military conflict in north Africa have fuelled a sharp rise in the number of people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with up to 30,000 migrants believed to have made the journey across the Mediterranean over the past four months. Last month more than 800 migrants of different nationalities who left on boats from Libya never made it to European shores and are presumed dead.

Malaysia will accept 800 asylum seekers who entered Australia illegally by sea in a groundbreaking deal between the two countries to tackle people smuggling. In return, Australia will resettle 4,000 registered refugees living in Malaysia, according to a joint government statement late last Saturday. Australia has long attracted people from poor, often war-ravaged countries hoping to start a new life, with more than 6,200 asylum seekers arriving in the country by boat last year. Most are from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq, and use Malaysia or Indonesia as a starting point for a dangerous sea journey to Australia.

"This landmark agreement will help take away the product people smugglers are trying to sell - a ticket to Australia," Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.

Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English laid the ground for a tough Budget next week, including cuts to KiwiSaver and Working for Families. Mr Key described the KiwiSaver scheme as "wildly successful at one level" because the 1.67 million who had signed up had far exceeded predictions but "at the end of the day it is not affordable in its current form.” Asked when it became unaffordable, after two and a half years in power Key said: "Bluntly it has become unaffordable when New Zealand is no longer running the big surpluses that the previous Labour Government thought were there." The New Zealand dollar dropped almost half a cent after the comments.

Labour's Finance spokesman David Cunliffe drew attention to the fact the New Zealand superannuation fund had made a return of 32% Mr Cunliffe said Crown debt, would have been reduced by $375 million if contributions had been maintained. The National Government predicted a $2.4 billion pre-election deficit, however Bill English has estimated that to be $15 billion now.


John Key's Government has slashed support for accident victims and is claiming it as a success, said the Green Party. "This Government has been deliberately undermining ACC and is making it harder and harder for accident victims to get support, and they now have the heartlessness to call it a success," said Green Party ACC spokesperson Kevin Hague.

The Government announced this week that it has made savings in the non-earners ACC account but had been deliberately undermining ACC and is making it harder and harder for accident victims to get support, and they now have the heartlessness to call it a success. They have cut services across the board - sexual abuse victims, people suffering hearing loss and accident victims with knee and back injuries are being denied medical support. John Key's Government needs to stop cost cutting by denying accident victims surgery. These cut backs are forcing accident victims to go to the courts to get ACC support, where justice is delayed - often for years, the Greens said.

An Otago University epidemiologist says child poverty is leading to a huge increase in severe skin conditions among Maori and Pasifika. New Zealand has one in five children living in poverty. Associate professor Michael Baker says incidence of the skin conditions has doubled over the past two decades, with Maori children almost three times more likely than Pakeha to be affected. 

“There are some families who have inadequate amounts of hot water and soap for washing, getting their children to see a doctor early is difficult because of transport costs, and also the high cost of after hour’s consultation with a GP so these are all barriers that are affecting the poorest groups in New Zealand,” Dr Baker says. 

Typhoid fever has been confirmed in a kiwifruit worker in the Bay of Plenty. Other workers have also been infected and Zespri has had to destroy $800,000 worth of produce that could have been contaminated. The worker came to New Zealand under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, however neither Zespri nor New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers would name the orchard, the worker, or the country from which the worker contracted the infection, which was reported to health authorities on Saturday. The decision to scrap kiwifruit the worker may have handled came after an investigation by health authorities and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry this week.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation's gold medal for exceptional courage in the pursuit of human rights, in an award ceremony that took place in London this week. He was only the fourth person to ever receive the award in its 14-year history and was praised for challenging government secrecy and championing people's right to know. The whistle-blowing website enraged Washington by publishing thousands of secret United States diplomatic cables and threats against Mr Assange’s life had been made.

"We think the struggle for peace with justice inevitably involves conflict, inevitably involves controversy. We think that you and WikiLeaks have brought about what we think is a watershed in journalism and in freedom of information and potentially in politics." the foundation's director Professor Stuart Rees said.

He also criticized the Australian government, saying it must stop shoring up Washington's efforts to "behave like a totalitarian state," and said it was "appalled by the violent behavior by major politicians in the United States."