Wikileaks Donations Account Shut Down 725
Scrameustache writes "The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government. Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist. The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan."
Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, is US government hatred of freedom and democracy even news?
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Making enemies faster than they can kill them...
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Well Duh, If you kill all your enemies you can't justify continuing the eternal war
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)
Well to be fair, everybody is a massive douche, save you and me, and even thou art a bit of a douche.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
And massive douche marks don't deserve any rights, especially when they have the nerve to not be born into the American Regime.
Preach it!
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you mean the right to choose not to do business with someone that a third party doesn't approve of. A third party which can have you and your whole family assassinated, not really even bother to hide it (although not actually admitting it publicly) and not only get away with it, but have millions of apologists like you, Bigjeff5, appear to be who will cheer and argue about what a good thing it was and about how any innocent family members, neighbors or bystanders killed in the process were victims of the assassinated rather than the assassins because the assassinated were using them as "human shields". Some of us think that the free exercise of "the right to do business with someone you don't approve of" requires that you actually get to choose who you don't approve of rather than having extremely powerful entities tell you who you shouldn't approve of by use of punitive measures. Also, please, if you can rationally deny that being put on a US government watch list is a punitive measure then I would, by all means, love to hear the logic behind the denial.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)
For Christ's sake all the US Govt did was put him on a watch list
No, the LATEST thing the US did was put them on watchlists, causing them to lose access to their money. It's not the only thing they've done.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)
Fact check:
wikileaks did not facilitate the theft of a large number of confidential military documents.
wikileaks facilitated the distribution of a large number of confidential military documents that had been stolen.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Informative)
Seems to me the US military has been whining on an epic level compared to WikiLeaks... Except you probably don't see it as whining.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Case in point - Pentagon Papers about Vietnam, classified, leaked, published by major newspapers despite serious government objections. Back then, courts approved the journalist right to publish such documents. Has it been forgotten already?
We don't have laws to prevent distribution such secrets - instead, we have specific laws to protect the anonymous journalist sources, especially designed for cases such as this - because the society right to know information and freely talk about it stands above the government desire to 'protect' anything.
Copies of information is not stolen property in any way. No U.S. government documents are in possession of wikileaks, and as far as we know, none of this has been obtained by breaking&entering secure premises. If some individual leaks a secret (government classified data or cocacola secret recipe) that was available to him, then he may be liable for breaching whatever was binding him and requiring not to disclose it; but there is nothing prohibiting free citizens from distributing it further, it falls under first amendment, as per court cases regarding the same Pentagon Papers for example.
The problem with wikileaks is that they are having to do the job that "real" journalists in major news agencies would be supposed to do, but as they are failing the society, then amateurs such as Assange have to do it, and they sometimes do it in a half-assed way.
Why are the leak sources not going to the reporters to NY Times or BBC? It's just a symptom that they are failing in their eagerness to dig the truth, talk to possible informants, and take brave steps to guarantee that their sources would be protected. *That* would be journalism, instead of republishing bigcorp or government press releases.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, thank god the US isn't quite at the level of Russia or China yet. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Exactly when will criticism of methods employed by the US government to stop dangerous activities be legitimate? Only when they involve assassinations through radioactive poisons or random incarcerations? Do you want the US to be the country it aspires to be, or merely something marginally better than the bottom of the autocratic barrel?
I would also argue that the activities described in the documents are acts against the the United States. They are counter-productive, create more enemies and tarnish the reputation of the United States by association. Why should they stay secret? They are already known to the local population, because they happened there. The only people who don't know about it are Americans. Again, why should the American people be kept in the dark about activities that create dangerous situtations for America?
Finally, how do you know that they actually did put Americans, Australians, British and others in danger? Because some politician told you so? Or because you read the documents yourself? If you didn't read them yourself, why do you trust the people who are indicted by the documents to tell you the truth about what is in the documents?
If the US is what it aspires to be, rather than just another country striving for survival by any means, there is no place for secrets that exist solely to prevent embarrassment.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Interesting)
Toppling Saddam Hussein was a completely idiotic thing to do. It was done so unter falsificated facts for the false reasons given. The main reasons given were Iraq's WMDs, which the weapon's inspectors told again and again wouldn't exist, and which failed to materialize afterwards, and for an allegedly collaboration with al-Qaida, which didn't materialize either, and which everyone (except in the U.S. apparently) was knowing was a figment of imagination. Saddam Hussein was during most of his reign an outspoken non-religious dictator, affiliated with the Ba'ath party which grew out of a christian founded, nationalistic-arab, socialist movement (ba'ath is arab and means "people") -- everything but a muslim fundamentalist. After 1991 he tried to steer away from Socialism to a more traditionalist arab ideology including embracing Islam, but no one was taking it serious, and he still hat christian people in his inner circle, like Tariq Aziz (christian name: Mikhail Yuhanna).
So the arab and the islamic world, knowing the WMDs were nonexistant and the link to al-Qaida fabricated, came to the conclusion, that only two reasons were valid: control of Iraqi Oil, and battling Islam at all cost -- not the way you make friends in the region. The U.S. and its allies were seen as the aggressors, taking on everything arab and islamic -- arab property, arab traditions, arab nationality, arab pride.
But -- you say, toppling a murderous dictator is right? Wrong. Helping the Iraqi people to get rid of Saddam Hussein on their own would have been right. Supporting the insurgencies in the southern part of Iraq would have been right. With the kurdish North it worked, Northern Iraq was no longer ruled by Saddam Hussein by 2003. But the South was neglected, and arab people saw themselves abandoned -- so it was natural for them to see the U.S. as primarily anti-arab.
If the U.S. would have waited another few years, Saddam Hussein would have been toppled anyway -- by the Iraqis themselves. Saddam Hussein was powerless already. He had nothing anymore to bribe his own ruling junta. He had to play games to reserve some street cred with his neighbours, but had to cave in whenever the Security Council of the U.N. was getting serious. The next big insurgence would have brought him down, either by the insurgents or by his own inner circle trying to hold on power on their own and sacrifying him as a scapegoat.
What are the lessons for the dictators around him? Caving in to UN sanctions and giving up on your weapons will make you weak and prone to the next invasion. Caving in to demands to stop the development of WMDs will make you weak and prone to the next invasion. If you want to stay in power, it is important to get WMDs as soon as possible, at all cost. North Korea and Iran have learned their lessons. North Korea is nuclear power since 2005, and the Iran is apparently doing everything to become one. Saudi-Arabia has an option to buy atomic bombs from Pakistan. The other Gulf states signed a contract in 2006 to develop civilian atomic facilities. Great job, United States!
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
No. They put Moneybookers on the watch list. That's entirely understandable when you want to target their clientele for doing something that you don't like. Assange (I'm sure) has been on the watch list for a long time.
The problem with being on that watch list is that it severely limits who you can do business with. No US government entity, contractor, or anyone wanting a govt contract will do business with you.
That's why this is a severe douche maneuver by the US federal government. I understand trying to freeze the accounts of the people who are supporting terrorists and terror activities... But to use this as a tool to silence someone who is helping point out abuses and incompetence is abuse.
BTW... I'm an American... and I'm ashamed. I'll continue to do what I can in the ballot and among those that will listen... But it's a nasty uphill battle against people who just don't give a damn.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing you haven't been to the airport since late 2001 or so.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
A perfect example of an event so rare that it should never be used as a reason for a policy. Terrorist acts are just not that hard. Highway deaths are the equivalent of a 9/11 every few months. Random chance is better at killing people here than terrorists are. Anyone quaking in their boots over it still is a fucking moron.
That shouldn't have resulted in a single change of policy. Not the creation of the TSA or DHS. Not the PATRIOT act... nothing. It was a single event with no follow up by a pissant organization that never had any hope of doing us any real damage without us helping them along by spending billions of our own dollars.
-Steve
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind the actual purpose of terrorism;
Terrorism uses "Terror" to "Illicit changes".
The creation of the patriot act, and associated bundle of dung due to a terrorist act is exactly the kind of thing that terrorists want; to disrupt ordinary life after the fact.
The best way to combat terrorism, is to not react with terror.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Informative)
e-lic-it/i`lisit/Verb
1. Evoke or draw out (a response or fact) from someone by actions or questions: "their moves elicit exclamations of approval".
2. Draw forth (something that is latent or potential) into existence: "war elicits all that is bad in us".
il-lic-it/i`lisit/
Adjective: Forbidden by law, rules, or custom: "illicit drugs"; "illicit sex".
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
The correct solution to that was to harden the cockpits. The incorrect solution was to spend a trillion dollars crushing the rights of US citizens, and another trillion dollars attacking two countries that had no nationals involved in the attack. Two trillion. So far. While our economy is in trouble.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardening the cockpits is one part of the correct solution. Possibly also training pilots not to negotiate with terrorists, even ones with hostages, since they apparently got into the cockpit of one of the planes by threatening to slit a flight attendants throat. The most important part of the correct solution though was to stop driving into the publics collective heads that if there's a hijacking that they shouldn't "try to be a hero". That was the security mantra before: "don't be a hero". The correct thing to do in a hijacking was always to sit tight, comply with the hijackers demands and try not to make waves. Anyone who tried to resist was an idiot who would just get themselves and others killed. You had to just sit tight and wait for the trained professionals to take care of the problem. Just look at movies about the topic. _Passenger 57_ springs to mind. There was one guy in it who tried to be a hero and grab one of the hijackers guns and just got bashed in the face for his efforts. What a fool, he should have just waited for the professional counter-terrorist to come and save him. If the 9/11 hijacking had taken place today, rather than 9 years ago, then probably, at the worst, all four planes would have ended up like flight 93. Combine a hardened cockpit with todays passengers and the captain would just have to announce over the intercom that hijackers are trying to break into the cockpit and a human swarm would take them down.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
But I don't see the entirety of the US government sitting around thinking of how much they hate freedom and democracy and conspiring ways to end it.
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." -Henry Kissinger
CIA intervention for regime change:
1953 Iran
1954 Guatemala
1959 Cuba
1960 Democratic Republic of the Congo
1963 Iraq
1964 Brazil
1966 Republic of Ghana
1968 Iraq
1973 Afghanistan
1973 Iraq
1976 Argentina
1978 Afghanistan
1980 Iran
1980 El Salvador
1980 Cambodia
1980 Angola
1981 Nicaragua
1986 Phillippines
1992 Iraq
1993 Guatemala
That list will grow larger as more documents are declassified.
To add a bit about blowback (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The 'red scare' wasn't real (Score:5, Insightful)
Boom! Irrefutable logic. The USSR had so little fuel (or poor supply lines) that they couldn't drive their tanks home in 1945. Ergo, they were completely powerless between 1945 and 1992. I heard that Khrushchev did *not* in fact go to the United Nations and declare that "We will bury you". And since the Soviet Union didn't have enough fuel in 1945, it's obvious that they didn't launch Sputnik into space, didn't have nuclear weapons, and didn't have ICBMs. It's all fiction - how could a country lacking in fuel in 1945 possibly get all those other things? Hellllll, I bet the Soviet Union didn't even have enough fuel to get Khrushchev to the UN in the first place!
As for 'Soviet style communism', Russia never was a communist country.
Even if it was true, it's totally, utterly irrelevant. The Soviet Union wasn't a threat because it wasn't a "true" communist country?
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be clear about this. America in all it's forms is an empire. They can dress it up and use the word 'democracy' all they want but in the end their plutocratic and hegemonic tendencies always shine through. America's ultimate goal is to control the world for the benefit of it's rich elite. Any evidence that shows this to the American people frightens the elite and all efforts - legal or illegal - will be used to stop it.
I realise this statement may be overused and has become abstract but; America is one step away from becoming a fascist state.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may
at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's think about this..
US government officals are angry that Wikileaks is revealing their secret abuses of power.
So, they respond by publicly abusing thier power, where everyone can see, Because "Darn it, We just CANT let people know what we are REALLY doing here!"
I am at a complete loss for words.
The absurdity of the whole thing is staggering.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Who was the last person to be adequately punished for classifying something inappropriately?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't tell you. Probably because when confronted they go "oops" and hand the information over to the people who have the authority to review the information for declassification, and it gets declassified.
All the more reason to believe that the people who stole and released the information didn't even try to do the right thing.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the people who review the information just rubber stamp the classification. The documents then sit in a filing cabinet somewhere, until they are 'lost', just before they were supposed to become public.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)
Have you seen the process for a FOIA request? You need to know the exact title and location of the document that you want. You can't just ask for documents relating to the cover-up of the bombing of a wedding party, you need to ask for US Army Action Report 172047a, CIA Predator Flight 2491 Operator Transcripts, and NATO After Action Report 1772-Q42. If the information that you actually need is in Flight 2490 Operator Transcript instead you need to start the process all over again (if you ever find out where it really is). Making things worse, generally the indexes themselves are classified, and if you manage to get access to one it will be so highly redacted as to be useless.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I see more danger in not having people like them. Some of the stuff that they have released, like "Collateral Murder" are things that never should have been kept from the public. Its one thing to keep data secret about troop movements to keep troops safe... its another when the idea is just to "protect our reputation". Its entirely right that people see the realities of war... so we can be reminded why we shouldn't EVER have one.
Personally, I feel bad that I never donated to them when I had the chance. I will gladly send them some cash when they get something set up again. I would rather them have my money than the people running these horrid wars that never should have been started. Its good to see them exposing what a crime war is.
-Steve
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason they didn't want to have that footage released. Apart from the fact that it hurts their reputation, it also suddenly paints war in a completely different way. If you remember around the first Gulf war, all the people got to see were these 'neat' camera shots made from the nose of a missile.
No dying people, no bodies lying strewn around.
All we saw was a cross-hair on a building that got bigger and bigger, followed by a breakup in communication, and a 'hilarious' comment about not wanting to be the guy in that bunker.
War was changed from a dirty business into something neat, without (at least to the perception of the CNN viewers) the hurt and suffering.
And that's exactly the same way they have been painting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. When was the last time you saw a firefight with someone getting shot on TV? They have created an image of war that they are desperate to keep.
Because if people start thinking about 'the enemy' as actual human beings, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to swear blind obedience to a government that goes overseas to kill people.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually agree with the first part (and include myself in it), although I strongly disagree with the second.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile, we still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan....
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that you were just imagining that this might happen. Would you act on your imagination?
Also imagine that your wife sleepwalked to the kitchen drawer, picked up an pair of scissors and stabbed you in the eye while you slept.
Imagine your dog attacking you and killing you in front of your children.
I suggest you first take care of the clear and imminent danger presented by your wife and dog and maybe then consider wikileaks.
Still not convinced?
SUDO imagine you have a wife and a dog...
Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)
There was no names nor pictures leaked... WikiLeaks actually went through the reports as best they could to censor that kind of information.
But go ahead, troll harder for the great of America.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's not reform the unconstitutional secret police who roam the earth assassinating people without trials, or torture people in secret prisons. Let's blame the people who talk about the secret police.
Assange is not ratting out FBI informants working in America. He's ratting out American atrocities in foreign lands. There is a huge difference.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)
Wikileaks held back fifteen thousand pages! (Score:5, Informative)
AIUI, those documents contain the names of people in Afghanistan who are giving information to the US. Publishing the documents without redacting the names tells the Taliban exactly who to kill. Does that answer your question?
Publishing the names without redacting them WOULD HAVE told the Taliban who to kill. But they DID REDACT AS MANY NAMES AS THEY COULD.
Re:Wikileaks held back fifteen thousand pages! (Score:4, Insightful)
So who has actually been harmed by any of it? Just one name, please.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Interesting)
Again and again and again I hear this claim.
The only concrete example I've ever seen was one local warlord who was named and later killed.
of course lots of people were being executed before that because of rumors of being informants, and people were killed after that over rumors of being informants.
The taliban don't really care about being accurate.
They're happy to kill anyone as long as it send the message "don't collaborate with the americans"
Re:Uh (Score:4, Informative)
That sort of information is redacted by Wikileaks. This is the main reason it takes them so long to release information after it has been given to them.
How should people help wikileaks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:4, Insightful)
The best way is to set up a nonpartisan, unbiased website that releases such documents without the ridiculous commentary and shifty editing.
Assange has done a severe disservice to WL with his emphasis on injecting over the top editorial into the stories on the site.
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:4, Informative)
It still would be shut down. That and they would flat out lie if such documents revealed trumped up evidence (WMDs?), coverups (Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch), outright lawbreaking (Ilario Pantano shooting two detained Iraqis, Abu Ghraib torture), and suspicious circumstances (billions of dollars in cash sent to Iraq and can't be accounted for).
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair to Wikileaks, they actually let you see all of the source documents if you don't like their shitty editing.
There's nothing preventing people from going all "answers.com" and using Wikileaks' material as sources for their reports.
If they didn't summarize things at all and were just a clearinghouse of information, would as many people read it? Would you read Slashdot if there was no summary, just a title and a link? (You may now proceed to make fun of Slashdot's editorial quality.)
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, by editing video before releasing it. If wikileaks is about leaking information so the truth can be heard, it behooves them to release the *whole* truth, not just the parts they think are the most titillating.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They did release the whole video
Yes, after they were caught editing the video. You may think that's fine. I don't.
Now, since you say editing is bad, tell me of one news item you've seen where you were showed video that was not edited
Woah woah... so you're saying Wikileaks is under no obligation to rise above the likes of FOX News and MSNBC? Really??
And that's ignoring the fact that Wikileaks *isn't a news organization*. They've said so themselves *multiple* times. Furthermore, editing releases like tha
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Interesting)
They did release the whole video
Yes, after they were caught editing the video. You may think that's fine. I don't.
Why do you think it is not fine to edit video? What did they edit out of the video that was wrong to take out?
And what link do you have that proves that they provided the unedited video only after being 'caught' doing what every other news video have had done in the whole entire history of news video? Because I call bullshit on that too.
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Informative)
a problem with pogo.org is they are in inside the US.. so they are subject to National Security letters and gag orders.. if they had gone there - none of this stuff would have made the light of day except as a rumor before it was shut down.
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Interesting)
right. for information to be safe and free, it has to be outside (jurisdictionally) of US borders.
my god. who would have thought we would be saying or thinking this. 10, 20, 30 years ago I never would have imagined.
from this generation onward, kids will grow up totally assuming they are being tapped, bugged and wire-sniffed. we really didn't have that feeling decades ago (I'm old enough to know). there was phone tapping and bugging, but not blatantly and not widespread. now its totally in-your-face. gag orders: how much more in-your-face can you be? the very concept of a 'you cant even talk to your lawyer' is so unamerican it just would not be believed 20 yrs ago. no one would take you seriously; they'd say that the 50's and mccarthyism is long behind us.
sigh.
Re:How should people help wikileaks? (Score:5, Insightful)
He helped the enemy fight us (attacking the will to fight a war is just as useful as killing soldiers or sabotaging material)
Oh hell fucking no. You didn't just go there. I won't argue whether the action of the soldier was justified or not, because that's a story for a different thread. But to argue that merely providing information that tarnishes the image of the country as being the same as actively sabotaging installations and killing people is exactly what lead to the Kent State shootings, and enabled Hitler to rise to power in Germany.
That argument is bullshit of the highest degree, because it not only makes it impossible to have a rational discussion about a war, but it also is a pretext to qualify anybody who questions the war as being a legitimate target for killing. I have seen the effects of that kind of logic, and it directly leads to killing anybody who is deemed objectionable by the one in power.
Get the fuck out my country. You are the enemy.
Messengers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Messengers (Score:5, Insightful)
They continue to shoot the messenger. It wouldn't surprise me if the intelligence community turned that phrase literal.
I would be surprised: The US has long become more sophisticated than that. They understand that if you create a martyr, you could still be hearing about it two thousand years later. It's better to discredit them, make people think they're a narcissist, that they're reckless, that they're a rapist. Cut their funding, turn their friends against them, that's the kind of things I expect from the US; Straight up assassination I expect from Russians, their idea of subtlety is "exotic poisons".
All else being equal (Score:5, Insightful)
The simplest explanation usually the correct one....
The problem with your assumptions is that you assume the US government is WAY more capable and competent than it actually is.
What is closer to the truth Assange is a reckless narcisstic jackass who got put on watchlists for leaking US intelligence, along the way
he probably pissed off some women with his narcisstic jackass ways which caused them to accuse him of various misdeeds. Moneybookers cut him off because Moneybookers is a company based in Bahrain about to do an IPO and does not need the drama that his pitifully small accounts brings with them. Moneybookers wants to do things that are far less likely to bring them trouble like online gambling, international money transfers,etc,etc
http://www.ecommerce-journal.com/node/30006 [ecommerce-journal.com]
Breaking the Stalemate? (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point its just pointless bickering, if this guy releases the rest of what he's got, the US will have no real interest in him anymore I would think - because even if he 'mysteriously dies when his server mysteriously explodes', the copies of the document would have still been spread around like wildfire.
Re:Breaking the Stalemate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
These leaks don't do anything to stop the war. Most of the stuff that it had wasn't anything of use. That anyone with with an IQ more then 20 would knows that that stuff went on. The problem is releasing names, that puts people in danger.
Here is an example say platoon x was involved in a fight that had high civilian casulities, it happens the wrong people get killed. So now this unit goes to a new area that knows about it. What happens, the civilians will be extra scared of this platoon and probably do som
They need a better spokesperson (Score:3, Insightful)
I can get behind Wikileaks, but not Assange. He is egotistical tool.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I never said "not listen". I read and have read wikileaks and, for the most part, it does a great service. I have read editorials by Assange. I've seen interviews. I can form my own opinions without the help of CNN.
Piss off.
Re:They need a better spokesperson (Score:5, Interesting)
I have read editorials by Assange. I've seen interviews. I can form my own opinions without the help of CNN.
Piss off.
You say "Assange. He is egotistical tool", you say you believe that opinion to be your own. Can you say why you believe what you believe, aside from claiming that you can?
You made two claims, prove t me you know what you believe:
1- What has Julian Assange done that proves he is egotistical? How is he demonstrably selfish and self-centered?
2- To whom is he a tool? Who holds that tool and to what purpose?
Re:Ya (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like him at all.
Shoot the messenger! SHOOT THE MESSENGER!
I believe he is doing things for the wrong reason. He isn't releasing all this classified information because it is for the public good, he is doing it because it is an ego trip and makes him important, and because it hurts the US and he doesn't like the US.
Why, specifically, do you believe that?
I just don't think HIS reasons are the good ones he claims.
I don't think you know why you think that.
They really need a more moral spokesman
One that hasn't been accused of rape, only to have the accusation taken away in less than 24 hours bu not before it made the news?
and they need to get some rules that they follow for what they do and don't release. If the rule is "Any and everything," ok fine but make that up front and known. Say "We release anything, without regard for what harm that it may cause or if the information is of value to the public." However if that's not what you want to do, if you want to decide if things are important enough to release and to try to not cause any harm, then that's fine too, but you need to have a policy to that effect and stick to it. In the case of the classified cables that would mean only releasing those that showed something of public interest, and redacting names and so on. Ya that's a lot of work but that is what it takes to be responsible about it.
That is exactly what Wikileaks has been doing. The pentagon claims they haven't, but that's just a lie. You believed that lie, unfortunately.
As it stands Assange seems to want to play at being the good guy, but he's just a jackass that likes to pump his ego and get egg on teh face of those he doesn't like.
What do you base that on?
he's way too egotistical to realize that it would be much better off if he stepped down.
I do think the world needs things like Wikileaks, however it needs them run by people who actually care about the public good.
Yeah, look at some of the non-public-good, egotistical things he's done: Starting around 1997 he co-invented "Rubberhose deniable encryption," a cryptographic concept made into a software package for Linux designed to provide plausible deniability against rubber-hose cryptanalysis,[13] which he originally intended "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field."[14] Other free software that he has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache
Open source software to protect human rights worker? What a narcissistic jerk!
Too much secrecy kills a government (Score:4, Insightful)
The US government is keeping so many facts and events classified, it simply can not function as a democratic government anymore.
When people don't have access to important information, they can't vote correctly. And when they can't vote correctly, the government can't make the right decisions. I understand sometimes secrecy is necessary for safety, but too much simply kills a democracy. Wikileaks is the expression of that idea, as they fight the excessive secrecy of governments and try to provide citizens with information that citizens should have.
The sweet irony (Score:5, Interesting)
It is funny (and, in a way sad) that the same country that sponsored all those radio stations I used to listen to as a young girl for (freedom-)free information during the Cold war years from behind the Iron curtain is now trying to stomp out a website that does exactly the same.
Ah, dreams of my youth, when did you wither away?
Re:The sweet irony (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, dreams of my youth, when did you wither away?
For me, about the same time I found out that Margaret Thatcher didn't want the Berlin Wall to come down [timesonline.co.uk].
"Even 20 years later, her remarks are likely to cause uproar. They are all the more explosive as she admitted that what she said was quite different from the West’s public pronouncements and official Nato communiqués. She told Mr Gorbachev that he should pay no attention to these.
“We do not want a united Germany,” she said. “This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.” "
Mrs Thatcher - TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!
Re:The sweet irony (Score:5, Insightful)
The radio stations of which you speak were a propaganda tool
Well, to those who listened to them, they were mostly a very valuable alternative source of information, and a strong message that it can be free ;)
It is the loss of this message that makes me sad, because it is a worthy ideal to have.
meant to weaken the communism regimes and recruit internal supporters.
Haha. I like this phrasing, it is straight out of the newspapers on the other side. It wasn't true then, and it isn't true now. The "recruit internal supporters" part is not even interesting to comment.
As for "weaken the regime", well, any regime that does things, which it wants to hide, deserves all the exposure and "weakening" it can handle.
US government was smart enough to realize that exposing "bad" information is a powerful weapon.
They ought to be smart enough to realize that trying to stomp bad news out will work as well for them, as it worked for the evil communists.
The even sweeter irony (Score:3, Interesting)
I have noticed that the US government is really taking the wrong approach to this, personally, whenever I hear about wikileaks in the news I always go and browse there for a while (and if I had the cash I'm donate), but otherwise I honestly don't even remember its there.
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Who? Has anyone documented a case where this happened? from what I read WL were pretty careful in vetting the material.
Without names and places this is FUD.
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:5, Informative)
My feeling exactly. Wikileaks has conflated the public "right to know" with an imaginary "need to know," and decided that this right is more important than the lives of the people named in the documents. IMAO, they've consistently shown a complete lack of common sense and a reckless disregard for the danger they're exposing people to.
You obviously don't know that they held back fifteen thousand pages because they contained names that ma or may not be innocent people. You hate them for something they're not guilty of. You've been successfully manipulated by well crafted propaganda, but don't feel bad, it happens to millions of people every day.
Yes, we all know of times when things have been classified because that's the easiest way to cover up mistakes, and things like that deserve leaking, but leaking the names and locations of people who are helping the US to fight terrorists is Simply Wrong.
And that is why wikileaks did not do that, but the pentagon says they did. So you'll hate them and refuse to listen. And it works sooooo well.
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:5, Insightful)
unlike you, I'm adult enough
Calling me "not an adult" is not the action of an adult. You now say you dislike "their actions" but those actions are fictions. Grow up and learn to admit your mistake; when you believed and repeated a lie you were told, once you've learned that it was a lie, stop defending it.
And stop being the kind of petty little shit that moves the goalposts to "what my bile was directed at", you know damn well that's irrelevant, what's important is "was wikileaks reckless or diligent". The truth is they redacted documents for review in order to avoid causing harm to innocents, the lie is that they didn't. You believed and repeated and are now defending the lie, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:5, Informative)
Im not totally on Wikileaks side because they didn't take enough care to protect peoples names in the content they released.
They held back 15 thousand pages to protect people's names while they tried to sort through them. Google it.
They asked the pentagon to tell them which name to remove, the pentagon told them to go to hell.
Its one thing to release content for the world to see but its another thing to get people killed by releasing it with out at least removing names.
They did remove names, and they got no one killed. Try to find someone they got killed: You can't. The people who said they were gonna get people killed are the people who actively do indeed actually kill real people, have been for years, plan on doing it for years still. They fed you FUD, and you ate it all up.
That totally turned me off from Wikileaks.
Mission accomplished.
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:4, Insightful)
They held back 15 thousand pages to protect people's names while they tried to sort through them. Google it.
They asked the pentagon to tell them which name to remove, the pentagon told them to go to hell.
See this kind of statement doesn't make sense to me. Why is it reasonable to steal documents from the Pentagon and then go back to them and say "Hey, we stole so much that we care to look through ourselves so go redact this for us"?
That does indeed make no sense. What actually happened makes sense, though: They were given documents, they reviewed them, identified thousands and thousands of pages that they were uneasy about releasing because they contained information that could be used to harm innocent people, and they asked the one source that knows who's who in these papers to tell them who to protect.
The pentagon decided that instead of helping protect innocent people, they would lie and say that wikileaks didn't even try to protect innocent people, and that wikileaks is putting people in danger. Because the pentagon is very good at propaganda, and doesn't mind one bit if innocent people get killed, so long as they get away with killing them scott free.
Re:I dont feel sorry for Wikileaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps some people suffered as a result of that leak, but I find that no more tragic than the dozens of people who die to IED's and suicide bombings every other day in those same countries.
Re: (Score:3)
Hey,
Would you help us redact some names from these stolen classified documents?
I'm not exactly sure how they were in a position to agree and assist. Assisting, would really be acknowledging that wikileaks had a right to the information and the release of said data was approved. It's complete rubbish to assume that anyone inside the government would agree to anything like that. It's such a horse shit move to continue to cite that reasoning as why its ok to release classified data.
The documents are what they
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What laws has Wikileaks failed to comply with?
Re:Good riddance to wikilinks! (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear that said, but I hear politicians say these kinds of things all the time - PROVE to me that someone(s) got hurt/killed due to this release and I may feel otherwise, but for now, I believe they are being targeted for "pissing off" the powers that be.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
there was such a rush to publicize them without proper redaction and editing. PROVE to me that
You're spreading FUD. Read this instead:
A lawyer representing the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks says
U.S. government officials have been given codes and passwords granting them online access to official U.S. government documents that WikiLeaks so far has not published. [newsweek.com]
Timothy Matusheski, a lawyer from Hattiesburg, Miss., who says he represents whistle-blowers and has been in touch with both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and at least one government official involved in investigations of WikiLeaks, sa
Re:Good riddance to wikilinks! (Score:5, Insightful)
result in the deaths of Afghan civilians and US/coalition soldiers
Wikileaks has killed no one, the people accusing them of doing so have killed tens of thousands: Use your head, figure out the FUD.
Re:Good riddance to wikilinks! (Score:4, Informative)
Reading, sharing, and publishing classified information is not against the law unless you have a security clearance. Obviously the classified documents passed into the public domain by someone who obtained them by having the proper clearance, and that person (those people) are the ones that should be punished for the release. And if someone without clearance broke into the place where they were stored, they may be guilty of burglary or theft, but the person who failed to physically secure the docs is responsible for the unlawful dissemination of classified information.
If you don't have a security clearance, you are not bound by the rules governing their access. Your access is the result of someone with a clearance (and thus bound by the rules) failing to secure them.
It's like if I reveal trade secrets to someone not employed by my company, they are under no obligation to prevent the spread of those secrets. Since I am employed by that company, I am responsible.
WikiLeaks is doing nothing wrong. They are acting honorably.
Re:Good riddance to wikilinks! (Score:5, Informative)
Regardless of what you might think, the US law doesn't apply worldwide.
Re:"Official US Watchlist" (Score:4, Informative)
One possibility is the SDN list: http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sdn/ [ustreas.gov]
Re:Wikileaks puts lives at risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguably though, the best way to avoid putting Afghan civilians and US troops out of harm is to have US troops go back to the US.
Re:Wikileaks puts lives at risk (Score:5, Insightful)
If you put it that way, leaking ANY information about ANYONE should be illegal? Why should he be in prison? As far as I know, no law was broken.
The US soldier who leaked the information in the firstplace - yes, you could call that treason. And yes that's illegal.
Re:Wikileaks puts lives at risk (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not really treason since the owner isn't from the US. He's Australian.
It's against Australian law to reveal the secrets of Australia's allies.
Still not treason.
Re:Wikileaks puts lives at risk (Score:4, Insightful)
That's only if you believe the troops NEED to be in Afghanistan to begin with.
As far as I'm concerned - the amount of danger Wikileaks put on soldiers pales in comparison to the amount of danger Bush has put on them. They'd be far safer on US Soil protecting the actual US Borders instead of it's foreign interests;
It's like me breaking into your house and complaining that your dog pointed me out.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They released documents that put Afghan civilians and US troops at risk.
War puts lives at risk. If anything negative actually happened as a result of the release, well, [citation needed]. And if it's not a primary source, [citation needed] all the way down until it goes no farther, and then we can evaluate the legitimacy of the information.
This isn't protecting democracy, it's treason.
Do you even understand the definition of treason in the United States Constitution? Or the dictionary definition, for that matter?
Wikileaks is giving aid to the enemy.
Again, [citation needed].
The founder should be in prison, and slashdot is whining about the donation page getting shut down?
Put up hard information, or shut your authoritarian piehole.
Re:Wikileaks puts lives at risk (Score:5, Insightful)
They released documents that put Afghan civilians and US troops at risk.
No, they released documents that showed that US policy routinely massacres Afghan civilians and puts US troops at risk.
The pentagon said "releasing these documents puts the lives of the people we bomb at risk", it's transparent bullshit, but the sheeple say "baaaa". Do you remember that lil' Vietnamese girl that got napalmed and then spectacularly photographed, and the pentagon spent over a decade saying she got burned in a kitchen mishap? Did you believe their kitchen mishap cover story as much as you believe their "the truth is the enemy" cover story?
Remember how they told you Pat Tillman was shot by Taliban, and it turns out there were no Taliban there that day? Did you believe them when they told you a soldier in Afghanistan was shot by Taliban? Was it a believable lie?
How about the cute little blonde soldier that got knocked out in an attack on her convoy and the pentagon said she had fought valiantly to the last bullet of her sidearm, they attacked a hospital that had been trying to hand her over to "rescue" her, made up stories about the Iraqis treating her badly... did you believe that too?
Don't you think you should be less gullible and more informed?
This isn't protecting democracy, it's treason.
Yeah! Those Swedes are committing treason in the united states by letting that Aussie publish those documents! TREASON! And you don't sound like an idiot at all when you say that. Not at all.
One more story (Score:5, Interesting)
My brother, a combat medic, was with a group that was being attacked. He was in the room when a sergeant told a soldier to stick his head out the window to see what was up. The kid stuck his head out the window and got a bullet to the face, and the sergeant turned without a word and walked into the other room. My brother had to clean the mess up.
If you google the name of the deceased soldier the reports say he was killed by an IED. His family does not know the truth of how he died.
Talk to any soldier that has seen action and ask them if they saw anything get covered up, I'm willing to bet you won't find any soldier who has been deployed that can say "no".
Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
[Citation Needed]
Information is also classified when you want to perform atrocities or "its not good for morale", or its dissemination will cause the main plan not to work.
The My Lai Massacre was 'classified' for a year or so before it became public knowledge.
The names in the leaked documents aren't half as important as the actions they committed.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Assange is not an American citizen. He has absolutely no obligation to follow American laws or processes. Just because it's the law does not make it the "right thing".
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
1. In this case it's the right thing.
2. It's against Australian law to reveal the secrets of Australia's allies.
3. He has an absolute obligation as a human being not to put other human beings in danger when there are other avenues to address the problem. This is especially pertinent, since his argument for releasing the information was that it shows his adversaries doing exactly that as well.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why you don't ask them. You ask someone else who has the power to put them in jail.
This is what the source of the information should have done. Instead of burning a CD and sneaking it out, he should have gone to the Inspector General at the level above the unit that had the illegally classified information and reported its existence. And kept walking up the chain until he was sending letters to the President, who is the direct source of the rules for classifying information.
He did none of that. Assange did nothing even remotely like that. Both of them conspired to do the stupidest possible thing, because neither of them could stand existing without the glory of doing the stupidest possible thing. Both of them decided instead to do exactly the thing the enemy wanted most: release a pile of legally classified information because mixed into it were small segments of illegally classified information.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Informative)
This is what the source of the information should have done. Instead of burning a CD and sneaking it out, he should have gone to the Inspector General at the level above the unit that had the illegally classified information and reported its existence.
You are so, so very naive: After word leaked that one soldier (presumably Winfield) had spoken to military police, several platoon members retaliated. They confronted the informant and beat him severely - punching, kicking and choking him, then dragging him across the ground. As a last warning, Gibbs menacingly waved finger bones he had collected from Afghan corpses. [whistleblower.org]