Wikileaks

[Christopher Hall]

I enjoy the irony of the fact that a country which routinely spies on its citizens stands outraged when its own secrets are leaked.

Welcome to our world, guys.

This is the country's opportunity to go through airport security.

Nonetheless, I certainly wish that Wikileaks or some site like it could access and post the various files in US government possession relating to the JFK assassination.

[Walt Rollins]

Maybe we will get no info on JFK, 9/11 or any other such events because Wikileaks is a product of a controlled disinformation program run by some nation's intelligence agency.

Link:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/294/056/Is_the_Internet_9_11_Under_Way.html

Edited December 5, 2010 by Walt Rollins

[Guest Tom Scully]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html

Monday, Dec 6, 2010 12:07 ET

The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks

...Yahoo News!' Michael Calderone has a very good article documenting how major American media outlets -- as always -- snapped into line with the authorities they serve by ceasing to use the term "whistle-blower" to describe WikiLeaks....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20101206/ts_yblog_thecutline/some-news-outlets-stop-dubbing-wikileaks-a-whistleblower

UPDATE:

...All the oppressive, lawless policies of the last decade -- lawless detention, Guantanamo, disappearing people to CIA black sites, rendition, the torture regime, denial of habeas corpus, drones, assassinations, private mercenary forces, etc. -- were designed, first and foremost, to instill exactly this fear, to deter any challenge. Many of these policies continue, and that climate of fear thus endures (see this comment from today

lame of me

In re: to Greenwald's update, I am one of those who has seriously given thought to donating to wikileaks or to help in some way. Then I thought a minute about the power of the US government and my two very young daughters and what would happen if they went after those who donated money to wikileaks. So, I've done nothing. I feel quite guilty about it, but I can infer based on Greenwald's note that it's not an uncommon fear. It's so sad.

—ga73 Read ga73's other letters

as but one of many examples). As the treatment just thus far of WikiLeaks and Assange demonstrates, that reaction -- though paralyzing and counter-productive -- is not irrational. And one thing is for sure: there is nothing the U.S. Government could do -- no matter how lawless or heinous -- which (with rare exception http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09thurs2.html ) would provoke the objections of the American establishment media.

Given (and compared to the scope of) the open and escalating official acts of lawlessness and crimes against the peace (invasion and occupation of Iraq on contrived and then vaporized pretext of imminent threat) and against humanity we have witnessed since 9/11, are our focus on and concerns about the official cover up of the assassination of JFK reduced to a quaint, anachronism?

Edited December 6, 2010 by Tom Scully

[Ron Ecker]

Aren't these all State Department diplomatic cables? I doubt there would be much chatter in them about who shot JFK or who was behind 9/11. They deal with matters of a more practical and pressing nature, like which foreign leaders are SOBs, which ones support American imperialism, and saying whatever impresses Hillary Clinton and her lieutenants.

[Christopher Hall]

Some of the related things going on right now sound like fodder for late night television monologues.

Assange sought by Interpol for refusing to wear a condom and for "sabotaging" condom.

Department of Homeland Security swoops in to raid bit torrent sponsors (protecting Lady Gaga and Keith Urban recordings instead of our borders).

You can't make up some of this stuff.

Although I would give anything to see a JFK assassination document dump, I believe that our last best chance of getting to see the more than one million hidden documents will come from legislative action or by executive order.

If I were the President, I would issue an executive order requiring the release of these records.

From a poltical standpoint, I think it would be popular with the populist types who are rather ubiquitous these days.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Isn't it ironic that, with all the vitriol directed at Obama by the "non-populist types" this facet of his failed and anti-constitutional leadership is among the least mentioned or criticized?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/07/wikileaks/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html

...To recap "Obama justice": if you create an illegal worldwide torture regime, illegally spy on Americans without warrants, abduct people with no legal authority, or invade and destroy another country based on false claims, then you are fully protected. But if you expose any of the evils secretly perpetrated as part of those lawless actions -- by publishing the truth about what was done -- then you are an Evil Criminal who deserves the harshest possible prosecution....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12leak.html?_r=1

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/06/holder_on_assange_again/index.html

Monday, Dec 6, 2010 13:51 ET

Holder threatens WikiLeaks, again

Attorney general says that unspecified but "significant" actions have been taken in the criminal probe of WikiLeaks

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/07/wikileaks/index.html

...Gitlin -- in the course of denouncing Julian Assange -- bolsters this falsehood: "Wikileaks’s huge data dump, including the names of agents and recent diplomatic cables, is indiscriminate" and Assange is "fighting for a world of total transparency."

The reality is the exact opposite -- literally -- of what Gitlin told TNR readers. WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297 diplomatic cables it has. Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them (The Guardian, the NYT, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Speigel, etc.). Moreover, the cables posted by WikiLeaks were not only first published by these newspapers, but contain the redactions applied by those papers to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm. Here is an AP article from yesterday detailing this process:

[T]he group is releasing only a trickle of documents at a time from a trove of a quarter-million, and only after considering advice from five news organizations with which it chose to share all of the material.

"They are releasing the documents we selected," Le Monde's managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann, said in an interview at the newspaper's Paris headquarters. . . .

"The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a question-and-answer session on The Guardian's website Friday....

Just as they did prior to releasing the Afghanistan war documents, WikiLeaks -- according to AP -- "appealed to the U.S. ambassador in London, asking the U.S. government to confidentially help him determine what needed to be redacted from the cables before they were publicly released." Although the U.S. -- again -- refused to give such guidance, WikiLeaks worked closely with these media outlets to ensure that any material which has no valid public interest value and could harm innocent people was withheld. And Assange's frequent commitments to engage in "harm minimization" when releasing documents gives the lie to Gitlin's assertion that he is "fighting for a world of total transparency."

...UPDATE III:...Journalists cheering for the prosecution of Assange are laying the foundation for the criminalization of their own profession, or at least of the few who actually do investigative journalism. ...

Edited December 7, 2010 by Tom Scully

[Guest Robert Morrow]

I support a tiered broadband system. It is called PAY for what you USE. And folks using a LOT of broadband need to pay MORE.

"Net neutrality" is the corporate/government scam to control the internet.