Tag Archives: Wikileaks

2013 In Brief

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January

Rail fares rise by 4.3 per cent in the UK, It is revealed that Jimmy Savile is the UK’s most prolific sex offender, making a scandal that rumbles on for the rest of the year. Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and Iceland are forced to remove ‘beef’ products that are contaminated by horse meat. Barack Obama is inaugurated for his second term as US president.

February

The skeleton of King Richard III is discovered under a Leicester car park. He promptly wins hide and seek winner of 1485, Pope Benedict XVI resigns, the first ever pontiff to do so, The House of Commons votes in favour of legislation to introduce same-sex marriage by 400 votes to 175, Oscar Pistorius is charged with murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria. He says he shot her because he thought she was a burglar. Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence win Best Actor and Best Actress awards at the Oscars. Argo wins best film.

March

After having cancer for over a year, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, dies at the age of 58, After a nuclear test, UN Security Council passes strict new sanctions against North Korea, 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes the 266th pontiff, Amanda Knox is acquitted of the murder of Meridith Kercher on appeal by Italy’s supreme court.

April

Margaret Thatcher dies aged 87 after a stroke. She was prime minister from 1979 to 1990 and is still the UK’s only female prime minister, Nicolas Maduro becomes Venezuelan president. He is a former bus driver and remains down-to-earth, the 117 Boston marathon is bombed, killing five people and injuring a further 264. An eight-storey building collapses in Bangladesh. It kills 1,129 people and injures another 2,515. Primark and Walmart, are just two of the big brands it produced clothes for.

Angelina Jolie has breasts removed.

May

James McCormick is sent to prison for selling fake bomb detectors. The UN and Iraqi security forces were just two of his buyers, Amanda Berry escapes the clutches of Ariel Castro who had held her captive in his home in Cleveland, Ohio, since 2003 along with two other women and a child, Sir Alex Ferguson retires, Angelina Jolie reveals that she had a double mastectomy, A 295mph tornado strikes Moore, Oklahoma, killing 23 people, Lee Rigby, who was a Drummer of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, is murdered near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, Southeast London, creating shockwaves around the world at the brutality of his murder. His killers are later shot by the police but survive to be charged.

June

Details of the NSA surveillance programme are leaked and published. They show that Apple, Google, and Microsoft all allow the NSA direct access to their servers. The papers are published by The Guardian and The Washington Post. Edward Snowden later reveals himself as the source and takes refuge in Hong Kong, Charles Saatchi is photographed with his hands around wife Nigella Lawson’s throat, they separate and their divorce turns ugly, Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, is forced to step down, Protests across Egypt call for the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi.

July

Mark Carney becomes the new Governor of the Bank of England, President Mohamed Morsi is deposed in a military coup, Andy Murray becomes the first British man to win Wimbledon since 1936, George Zimmerman is acquitted over the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, Same-sex marriage becomes legal in England and Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcome their first child, Prince George of Cambridge.

August

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos buys The Washington Post for $250m, Edward Snowden is temporarily granted asylum in Russia, Physiologist Mark Post creates the first bovine stem cells lab-grown burger, Supporters of disposed President Morsi are massacred by the security services In what the Human Rights Watch describe as “the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history”, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning is sentenced for giving confidential government information to WikiLeaks, he gets 35 years imprisonment, The badger cull begins in Somerset and Gloucestershire, Over 1,429 people are killed in chemical attacks in Damascus. Secretary of State John Kerry calls it a “moral obscenity”

September

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee backs military action against Syria, Greenpeace activists are arrested by Russian authorities in the Barents Sea. They become known as The Arctic 30 and a campaign for their release begins, Sixty-two people are killed and another 170 are wounded when Al-Shabaab militants attack the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, Ed Miliband goes to war against the Daily Mail after it describes his late father as “the man who hated Britain”.

October

A boat carrying migrants from Libya sinks off the Italian island of Lampedusa killing 359 people, The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons win the The Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert for their discovery of the Higgs boson, otherwise known as the God Particle, There is a breakthrough in the cure for Alzheimer’s disease after the discovery of a drug-like compound which halts brain cell death in mice, The Royal Mail floats and shares are oversubscribed.

November

Storms cause damage all over the UK, Typhoon Haiyan hits the Philippines, killing over 6000 people, Former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, Paul Flowers, is caught in a sting buying crystal meth and crack cocaine by a newspaper, First members of the Arctic 30 are released, Lostprophets lead singer Ian Watkins pleads guilty to child sex charges. Ten people are killed after a helicopter crashes into the Clutha bar in Glasgow.

Nadezhda_Tolokonnikova_(Pussy_Riot)_at_the_Moscow_Tagansky_District_Court_-_Denis_Bochkarev

December

Nelson Mandela dies aged 95, Jang Song-Thaek, uncle of Kim Jong-un is executed, The UN makes a £4bn aid appeal for Syria its biggest ever appeal, Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs dies aged 84, The ceiling of the London’s Apollo Theatre collapses, injuring 92 people. The acting world mourns as Peter O’Toole and Joan Fontaine die. The Pussy Riots are released.

Cass McCombs unveils new video for ‘Bradley Manning’ | Music News

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American folker Cass McCombs has unveiled the video for his latest song, ‘Bradley Manning‘, about the US Army Soldier who has been incarcerated on suspcion of passing classified material to the whistleblower website Wikileaks.

The video is a poignant tribute having been filmed, by director Bradley Beesley, in Manning’s hometown of Crescent, OK on Independence Day, allowing Beesley to capture iconic and patriotic visuals that create a mood eerily complimentary to the song.

Cass heads to the UK to play The Green Man Festival in August.

 

 

 

Wikileak in Afghanistan {Carl Packman}

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Julian Assange won’t find himself on any leaked document, but he should be under no illusion: he is enemy number 1 now. The owner of Wikileaks may have just tickled a ball too many with his latest release; 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict in Afghanistan.

Homeless Assange, whose profile on the Guardian notes him as confessing a genetic disposition to rebel, has spent the last 24 hours justifying his acts, in light of fierce criticism from the White House, who have said the leaks – probably the result of hacking (their assumption) – which contains classified and sensitive information could put the war effort in jeopardy.

The twitter hashtag #warlogs has had discussions ranging from whether to see Wikileaks forever more as a champion of free speech, or as a danger, more intent on causing naive damage and anarchy rather than any grown up appeal to classical liberal motifs.

Having seen a sample of the records myself I can conclude one thing for the nice readers at Frost Magazine: we are at war.

If you want to find out anymore, say if you want to see what Osama Bin Laden told intelligence in his poetic, tyrannical phraseology, or perhaps you’d like to see how much carnage the Taliban have caused with roadside bombings, go and see the files for yourself.

Though when you see them remember one of the main reasons why this stuff isn’t on public display (other than the issue of a national threat, or sensitivity to families): war is rubbish, people die, and it is often better to put it to the back of one’s mind, for otherwise the emotional proximity to what is really going on can have deleterious effects on a reasonable and rational opinion of the war effort in Afghanistan.

I call this the problem of overproximity, and I first spoke about it last year with regard to the camps in Calais that were home to many migrants. Photojournalist Jason Parkinson, a good guy, was frustrated by then immigration Minister Phil Woolas’ response to the camp. He wrote in the Guardian:

It is easy for Woolas, back in London, to arrogantly state these men don’t deserve asylum in the UK. But in doing so he exposes his distance from the issue. If he had bothered to go to the camps and squats around Calais and talk to these people, hear their stories first hand – perhaps then he would remember they are human beings and not just a statistic or price tag on a government spreadsheet.

It is my contention that it didn’t matter where Woolas made the decision if it involved taking a look at what the UK could do, but certainly visiting the camp was not going to help, only other than putting Woolas in a situation where his proximity to the problem would influence his reponse (we all know his stomach for pressure, just see Joanna Lumley take him down).

The leaked documents have the potential to change people’s mind in the wrong way, it will remind people that death is common to war, and that strategy has not always been good in Afghanistan.

The shock of the reality has the potential to delete from our emotional minds the cost of not challenging the Taliban – this network of extremists will not stop until every son of every scared parent in Afghanistan has forcefully been signed up to fight in their fascist wars.