Occupy All Streets

Rally For Assange Info:

Australia:

See Australian Friends of WikiLeaks Twitter (@AusFOWL) for information on all Australian rallies.

Adelaide
Where: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 55 Currie Street, CBD
When: 12PM - 2 PM, May 31
Resourses: FoWL poster
Contact: adelaidefowl@gmail.com , Twitter: @ADFOWL

Brisbane
Where: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 295 Ann St.
When: 12PM – 2PM and 4:30PM – 6PM, May 31
Resources: Flyer 1, Flyer 2, Sticker, FoWL poster (black), FoWL poster (red)
Contact: goldie_adele@yahoo.com.au
Overnight rally in Brisbane beginning at 4:00PM, May 30. See the press release for details.

Byron Bay
Where: Drumming Circle, Main Beach
When: 4PM onwards, May 30
Resourses: Facebook event page

Canberra
Where: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Sydney Avenue, Barton ACT
When: 12PM – 2PM and 4:30PM – 6PM, May 31
Resourses: FoWL poster
Contact: Twitter: @wirnpa

Melbourne
Where: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2 Lonsdale St.
When: 12PM – 2PM and 4:30PM – 6PM, May 31
Resources: Flyer, Flyer 2, Flyer 3, Flyer 3 (small), Sticker, FoWL poster
Contact: ausfowl@gmail.com, @AusFoWL, wacacontact@gmail.com, @akaWACA

Perth
Where: Murray St. Mall, 650 Hay St.
When: 5:30PM, May 31
Resources: FoWL poster
Contact: Facebook Event Page

Sydney
Where: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 123 Pitt St.
When: 5PM, May 31
Resources: Flyer, Flyer 2, Flyer 3, Sticker, FoWL poster, FoWL fliers

Townsville
Where: Ewen Jones’ Office, Nathan Business Centre, Aitkenvale
When: 12PM – 2PM and 4:30PM – 6PM, May 31
Resources: FoWL poster
Contact: Facebook Event Page

Further Resources:
Stop the War Coalition Sydney: Rally for Assange
WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance: Rally Action Alert

Germany:

Berlin
Where: Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz
When: 5:00PM, May 30
Resources: FoWL poster
Contact: Twitter: @BLNFOWL, http://fowl.freebrad.de/

Frankfurt
Where: Australian Consulate General, Neue Mainzer Strasse 52-58
When: 4:30PM, May 31
Resources: Demo Kit, Wordpress, FoWL poster
Contact: ffmfowl@tormail.org, Twitter: @FFMFoWL

United Kingdom:

Edinburgh
Where: Australian Consulate, Mitchell House, 5 Mitchell St.
Resource: FoWL poster
Contact: scofowl@gmail.com Twitter: ScoFoWL
London
Where: UK Supreme Court, Parliament Square, City of Westminster
When: 8:00AM (set up 7:30AM), May 30 (verdict at 9:15AM)
Resources: FoWL poster 1, FoWL poster 2, UK FoWL website
Contact: UKFoWL@riseup.net, Twitter: @UKFoWL

United States:

Denver
Where: Lincoln Park (Occupy Denver)
When: 5:30PM, May 30
Resources: FoWL poster
Contact: Twitter: @Kallisti

Honolulu
Where: Australian Embassy, 1000 Bishop Street
When: 11:30PM - 2PM, May 31
Resources: FoWL poster
Contact: Twitter: @HawaiiFOWL

New York
Where: U.S. State Department, 799 United Nations Plz followed by Australian Consulate, 150 East 42nd Street
When: 1:00PM, May 30
Resources: FoWL poster
Contact: Twitter: @WikiLeaksTruck

San Francisco
Where: Australian Embassy, 575 Market Street
When: 3:00PM, May 30
Resources: FoWL poster, Facebook event page
Contact: unite-4-julian@riseup.net

Washington DC
Where: Embassy of Australia, 1601 Massachusetts Ave.
When: 3:00PM, May 30
Resources: Flyer, FoWL poster
Contact: usfowl@tormail.org, Twitter: @USFoWL

Breaking: The UK Supreme Court has ruled that Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden. Assange has been given 14 days to appeal to the European court of Human Rights. If they do not respond, he will be extradite to Sweden where he faces sexual assault charges.

The UK Supreme Court will give their judgement on the Julian Assange extradition case in approx. 4 hours.

Breanna Manning Lawyers Charge Army With Withholding Evidence

Breanna Manning, the soldier accused of being behind the biggest leak of state secrets in US history, is being denied a fair trial because the army is withholding from her crucial information that might prove her innocence or reduce her sentence, her defence team is arguing.

With Manning’s court-martial approaching in September, her legal team has released details of what they claim is a shocking lack of diligence on the part of the military prosecutors in affording Breanna her basic constitutional rights.

The stakes are high, with Manning facing possible life imprisonment for a raft of charges that include “aiding the enemy”.

Manning’s main civilian lawyer, David Coombs, has filed a motion with the military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, that sets out a catalogue of delays and inconsistencies in the army’s handling of the case.

In particular, she claims the government has failed to disclose key evidence that could help Manning defend herself against the charges.

Almost two years after Manning was arrested, the military has not yet completed a search even of its own files to see if there is any material beneficial to the defence – as it is legally obliged to do.

Manning faces 22 charges relating to the transfer of a massive trove of US state secrets from military computers to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

She was arrested in May 2010 in a military base outside Baghdad, where she was working as an intelligence analyst, and has been in custody ever since.

Note: The pronouns and name has been edited.

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange To Receive Extradition Ruling On May 30th

Britain’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will give its judgement in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s long-running fight against extradition to Sweden on May 30.

The court announced the date in a statement on its website, saying the judgement would start at 9:15 am (0815 GMT) next Wednesday and would last around 10 minutes.

Assange took his case to the Supreme Court in February in a last throw of the dice within the British legal system, arguing that the Swedish prosecutor who ordered his arrest in December 2010 was not a proper judicial authority.

Sweden wants to question the 40-year-old Australian over allegations of rape (for not using condoms) and sexual assault, but Assange insists the sex was consensual and has argued that the attempt to extradite him is politically motivated.

Source

Bradley Manning Lawyer Says Military ‘Mishandled’ Case As Hearings Continue

Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of secret state documents to WikiLeaks, will face his military detractors again this morning at the start of up to three more days of procedural hearings ahead of a full court martial.

Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, has filed several defence motions with the military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, that call for all 22 charges against his client to be dismissed on grounds that the prosecution has mishandled the case. The lawyer will argue that the proceedings have been beset by delays and by refusal to hand over key documents during the discovery process, which he will say is a violation of the military rule book for court martials.

The hearing in Fort Meade is the third time Manning has been seen in public since his arrest on 25 May 2010 at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad. He was working as an intelligence analyst there, and has been charged with downloading and transmitting to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks a huge trove of US state secrets including confidential cables from embassies around the world.

Whistleblowing Wednesday: U.S. Mercenary “Took Part” In Gaddafi Killing, Sent To Assist Syrian Opposition

US government officials requested that an American private security firm contact Syrian opposition figures in Turkey to see “how they can help in regime change,” the CEO of one of these firms told Stratfor in a company email obtained by WikiLeaks and Al-Akhbar.

James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater, is currently the Chief Executive of SCG International, a private security firm with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In what appears to be his first email to Stratfor, Smith stated that his “background is CIA” and his company is comprised of “former DOD [Department of Defense], CIA and former law enforcement personnel.”

“We provide services for those same groups in the form of training, security and information collection,” he explained to Stratfor. (doc-id 5441475)

In a 13 December 2011 email to Stratfor’s VP for counter-terrorism Fred Burton, which Burton shared with Stratfor’s briefers, Smith claimed that “[he] and Walid Phares were getting air cover from Congresswoman [Sue] Myrick to engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and non-Qatari) on a fact finding mission for Congress.”

Walid Phares, named by the source as part of the “fact finding team,” is a Lebanese-American citizen and currently co-chairs Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Middle East advisory group.

Julian Assange’s Reality TV Show to Premiere Next Week

Julian Assange, 40, is an Australian-born political activist and journalist known for his controversial website WikiLeaks, which has published leaked documents that allege government and corporate misconduct. Assange fell into his career path after he was a hacker-activity in his early days.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has completed filming episodes for his upcoming reality TV show “The World Tomorrow,” which will air on Tuesday, April 17, on the Russia Today (RT) network.

Assange, who is the subject of a grand jury investigation in the U.S., will be hosting a series of conversations with “some of the most interesting and controversial people alive in the world today,” according to a statement attached to WikiLeaks’s Twitter page.

Assange filmed the series over the past two months at his temporary home in England, where he remains under house arrest.

Although it will originally air on Russia’s RT network, the show will also be available online and is expected to come to more networks in the near future.

“The World Tomorrow” will be a 12-episode series with a range of guests, from politicians and revolutionaries to artists and visionaries.

Source

The Obama Administration’s Disturbing Treatment of Whistleblowers

Over the past three and a half years the Obama White House has instead shown a ferocious hostility to many whistleblowers and earned itself the ire of progressive columnists like Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and whistleblower defence groups like the Project on Government Oversight and the Government Accountability Project.

Danielle Brian, of the PGO, has said the US department of justice in the Obama administration “sent a clear of message of fear and intimidation” to whistleblowers in the national security field. This is how the GAP’s Jesselyn Raddack – herself a former whistleblower at the DoJ – put it: “While the Bush administration treated whistleblowers unmercifully, the Obama administration has been far worse. It is actually prosecuting them,” she wrote recently.

To do that it is using the bluntest of tools: the Espionage Act, a first world war-era law intended to combat the threat from spies, not internal dissenters. So far six whistleblowers have been charged under the draconian law with the last one – CIA veteran John Kiriakou – being indicted on 3 April.

Kiriakou, who was a counter-terrorism expert in Pakistan and helped capture senior Al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, has been a vocal critic of waterboarding. He spoke to journalists and wrote a book about it, calling it torture and exposing it as a deliberate policy, rather than the actions of a few rogues. Now a hefty jail term could be his reward.

Others, from across a spectrum of government departments, include people who have exposed wrongdoing at the National Security Agency or fears at the FBI that Israel might attack Iran. Another at the state department spoke out about North Korean nukes and, of course, there is the suspected WikiLeaks source, army private Bradley Manning.

Defenders of Obama’s record on these whistleblowers point to a national security defence and say they actively encourage people to speak out about wrongdoing elsewhere. Whistleblowing may be one thing, they say, but intelligence leaking is another. Every government has a right to protect its secrets. But one can also point to other areas where the Obama administration has shown a love of secrecy that should shame the Democrats who slammed President George Bush for a similar attitude.

Courage is contagious.

“

—	Daniel Ellsberg, 1972. WikiLeaks motto.

Whistleblowing Wednesday: US To Uganda; Let Us Know If You Want to Use Our Intelligence For War Crimes

The US told Uganda to let it know when the army was going to commit war crimes using American intelligence – but did not try to dissuade it from doing so, the US embassy cables suggest.

America was supporting the Ugandan government in its fight against rebel movement the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), providing information and $4.4m (£2.8m) worth of military hardware a year.

But a year ago officials became concerned that the Ugandans were guilty of war crimes in the long-running battle against Joseph Kony’s rebel movement, which is famed for its brutal atrocities and abduction of children.

Jerry Lanier, the US ambassador to Kampala, reported on 16 December to Washington that the country’s defence minister, Crispus Kiyonga, had verbally assured him that American intelligence was being used “in compliance with Ugandan law and the law of armed conflict. This pledge includes the principles of proportionality, distinction and humane treatment of captured combatants.”

But Lanier continued: “Uganda understands the need to consult with the US in advance if the [Ugandan army] intends to use US-supplied intelligence to engage in operations not government [sic] by the law of armed conflict. Uganda understands and acknowledges that misuse of this intelligence could cause the US to end this intelligence sharing relationship.”

Nowhere, though, does it appear that the ambassador directly told the Ugandans to observe the rules of war.

Wikileaks: Invisible Children Inc. Spied For Uganda,

A non-profit organization behind the enormously successful “Kony 2012″ viral videos is on the defensive this week after anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks released a U.S. State Department cable which claims the group fed information to the Ugandan government that led to the arrest of at least one key opposition figure in the country.

Both the Ugandan government and Invisible Children Uganda, the group responsible for the Kony 2012 videos, have denied statements in the U.S. State Department cable, which was composed June 11, 2009.

The newspaper that first published details of the document, Black Star News in New York, reported that Invisible Children has also been coordinating their messaging strategies with the Ugandan government and two U.S. groups, including the Enough Project, founded by the Center for American Progress, in order to promote further U.S. military involvement in the country.

Cablegate: Hillary Clinton Orders U.S. To Spy on UN Leaders And Collect Their DNA

Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.

A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton’s name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.

It called for detailed biometric information ”on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders” as well as intelligence on Ban’s “management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat”.

A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.

Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and “biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives”.