Wikileaks' latest bombshells

[Anubis]

Some big US bank is next in line for the Wikileaks treatment in January. I can't wait. It's car crash internet at it's finest.

 

I'm not sure assassinating him is the way forward really. Apparently a number of packets of very interesting encrypted data have been downloaded to various trusted sources, which will be opened by the use of a code which'll be provided in the event of a, ahem, event. Could be a bluff to keep the authorities on their toes, but would anyone like to call it.

[Anubis]

Only JC Denton can help him now.

 

Are you sure?

 

 

[BatChainPuller]

Excellent piece about the hypocrisy involved in the attacks on Assange and WikiLeaks -

 

November 30, 2010

The Obama Administration's War on Truth

Holder v. Assange

 

By SHERWOOD ROSS

Sherwood Ross: Holder v. Assange

Maybe because he's from Australia, a U.S. satrap on the far rim of the American Empire, that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange doesn't know that Washington does not allow anyone to steal information unless it orders them to do so. Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama hack who will not prosecute CIA thugs for torture and murder, says he is mounting a criminal investigation against Assange because anyone who breaks American law “will be held responsible.” Prosecuting CIA Mafioso just doesn't excite Holder. Threatening Assange for releasing a quarter of a million of the Empire's secret files, does, especially since Assange did not alter or prettify them but released them in their unexpurgated state. Assange may or may not have raped a couple of Swedish ladies, as that spineless government suddenly needs to know, but there is no question he has disrobed the Statue of Liberty and shown all the world the whore she has become.

 

As for Bradley Manning, the Army PFC suspected of pilfering the evidence of Yankee cupidity and supplying it to Assange, he is being given free public housing in the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., on suspicion of previous disclosures of the Truth, and the Pentagon would love to throw away the key. Let him rot his life away in the company of the 2.5-million prisoners now overcrowding our vast penal colony for such insidious crimes as selling a joint. Manning's crime, as reported by AP, is: “I want people to see the truth...because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” And with an attitude like that you can't go far in a country whose government is bent on controlling the planet and doesn't want its sinister operations revealed. For his part, Assange told The London Telegraph President Obama has a record of arresting whistle-blowers and that he runs “a regime that doesn't believe in the freedom of the press and doesn't act like it believes it.”

 

Leading the charge against Assange is State Department boss Hillary Clinton, who said the release of the confidential files is “an attack on the international community,” a comment which pretty much sums up her own conduct as revealed by WikiLeaks. It is Ms. Clinton, after all, who has been doing the attacking. She ordered her diplomats to spy on Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, as well as on the UN Security Council representatives from China, Russia, France, and UK; the UN undersecretaries, the heads of the UN specialized agencies; the heads of UN peace-keeping operations, and foreign officials apparently in a score of countries. As the UK Guardian reported Nov. 28th, Washington 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'...” It also wanted to know of any plans by UN officials “to press for potentially embarrassing investigations into the U.S. treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay,” the Guardian said. So it has come to pass that the republic once cherished for birthing the ideals of individual liberty, including privacy, is now the world's spymaster, jailer, warmonger, torturer, and, yes, mass killer, the only nation that has used nuclear fire and which now threatens others with its use.

 

It is, FYI, illegal for the U.S. to bug the UN's phones as it did during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to find out how other countries were voting. But while Obama and Clinton are outraged that their own correspondence has been made public, the U.S. National Security Agency has been tapping telephones the world over. Together with junior partners UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the U.S. operates ECHELON, a global network of interception stations that eavesdrops on the whole blinking planet. "In multiple ways, each of the countries involved is breaking its own laws, those of other countries, and international law," Washington journalist William Blum writes in “Rogue State,”(Common Courage Press) noting that "the absence of court-issued warrants permitting surveillance of specific individuals is but one example" of ECHELON crimes. In Australia, Attorney General Robert McClelland has launched a probe to determine if WikiLeaks had broken any laws. In Congress, Senator Joseph Lieberman charged those responsible for the WikiLeaks disclosures have “blood on their hands,” never mind that Lieberman is a strong advocate of the Middle East wars that have killed, by some accounts, more than a million souls. (Say it ain't so, Joe.)

 

In sum, it's apparently insufficient that the U.S. runs the greatest spy operation in history via 16 agencies that Walter Pincus of The Washington Post writes will cost taxpayers $80 billion this year. Ms. Clinton, like her predecessor Condoleezza Rice, ordered her payrollers to become spies as well. “Fingerprints and photographs are collected as part of embassies' consular and visa operations, but it is harder to see how diplomats could justify obtaining DNA samples and iris scans,” the Guardian said. No it's not. In the brave new world run by the American Master Race, foreign diplomats are supplicants, not equals, who can be subjected to any humiliation. And so, (surprise!) can the American people. Their bodies are now subject to X-raying and physical groping at airports. Their telephones, faxes, and E-mails are being read. Their bank accounts and credit cards are being monitored. Americans are being arrested and prosecuted for exercising their Constitutional right to protest at a Republican Convention or at a trade conference. Their taxes are being stolen big-time to bail out private bankers. Their children are being ordered to fight wars of aggression based on the kinds of lies WikiLeaks at least has the courage to reveal and Ms. Clinton seeks to conceal. In short, don't look to America for freedom any more. It is locked up in a Quantico brig with PFC Bradley Manning.

 

Sherwood Ross formerly reported for the Chicago Daily News and worked as a wire service columnist.

[Wor Horse]

This is like a storyline on Spooks.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he's in a safe house on the Old Kent Road with Roz and Adam.

[zigackly]

Apparently Sarah Palin has said he should be hunted down like Osama Bin Laden. Should be sound for at least ten years then ...

[Anubis]

This is like a storyline on Spooks.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he's in a safe house on the Old Kent Road with Roz and Adam.

 

For his sake I hope not, as they're both dead.

[Anubis]

I initially read the first line of that Sherwood Ross piece "Maybe because he's from Australia, a U.S. strap on...."

[Fugitive]

[Wor Horse]

For his sake I hope not, as they're both dead.

 

You never do know with Spooks though do you?

[stevebaby]

I initially read the first line of that Sherwood Ross piece "Maybe because he's from Australia, a U.S. strap on...."

Your misreading is more accurate than the original.

[BatChainPuller]

Good article here: Joe Lieberman emulates Chinese dictators - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com about how Amazon stopped hosting the WikiLeaks website after political pressure for the US. Also contains a summary of some of the recent revelations that we wouldn't know about if it wasn't for WikiLeaks:

(1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;

 

(2) the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA's kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;

 

(3) the State Department under Bush and Obama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA's torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch today about this: "The day Barack Obama Lied to me");

 

(4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War "investigation";

 

(5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted;

 

(6) "American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world" about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post's own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents;

 

(7) the U.S.'s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal -- a coup -- but the State Department did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter;

 

(8) U.S. and British officials colluded to allow the U.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons, and,

 

(9) Hillary Clinton's State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.

[Guest davelfc]

Have not read all of the thread but...

 

If there's a lot of people believe 911 was in some way caused by the US in order to allow it to increase security, take away liberty and wage war with others. (I don't subscribe to a conspiracy theory)

 

Then surely there must be a case for saying that these leaks will only increase powers of nations to control the internet. These leaks are a gift for governments who have been looking for years to reign in the freedom the net has.

 

You are not telling me that nations do not protect their vulnerable installations, they spend millions doing just that. So the leaks today mean little. A serious terrorist would know most of the information anyway and any amateur wouldn't get close.

 

No, the very freedom wikileaks is using to release these documents is the very thing that they threaten by doing so.

[Funkasy]

So where is the freedom when you cant even use it without it been taken away ?

 

cant see any freedom in that.

[Penfold]

Wikileaks: Swiss bank closes Julian Assange's account

 

BBC News - Wikileaks: Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's account

 

The Swiss post office bank, PostFinance, has frozen the accounts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

 

The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says the freeze includes a defence fund and personal assets worth 31,000 euros.

 

Wikileaks has published hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables, angering the US government and triggering the shutdown of its main website, which was hosted on US servers.

 

Sites including PayPal and Amazon have also closed services to Wikileaks.

 

 

Be interesting to see what legal grounds they've done this on!

[WaltonRed]

Signed his own death warrant with those leaks today

[bossy]

Warrant out for him in the UK.

[dennis tooth]

Wikileaks: Swiss bank closes Julian Assange's account

 

BBC News - Wikileaks: Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's account

 

The Swiss post office bank, PostFinance, has frozen the accounts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

 

The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says the freeze includes a defence fund and personal assets worth 31,000 euros.

 

Wikileaks has published hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables, angering the US government and triggering the shutdown of its main website, which was hosted on US servers.

 

Sites including PayPal and Amazon have also closed services to Wikileaks.

 

 

Be interesting to see what legal grounds they've done this on!

 

 

 

Be interesting next time any cunt steps up and say we live in a free and fair democratic west with free speech and uses it to denigrate another country or region.

[Section_31]

It's all gone a bit Jason Bourne, except he's not hard. Could make for a shit film.

[WaltonRed]

We should run a poll on how he's going to be taken out!

[Malarkey]

Democracy? My bum cheeks.

[zigackly]

Whatever else Assange has or has not achieved, he has proved beyond doubt that concepts such as law, democracy and freedom of speech are dead in the western world as far as our governments are concerned.

[Anubis]

Rat fuck sons of bitches. It seems the UK, not content with removing the islanders from Diego Garcia to make way for a cushy US military outpost, are conspiring against them to ensure they can't return (even though UK court decisions are in their favour) by turning Diego garcia into a protected marine wildlife reserve. With a fucking US military base on it.

 

US embassy cables: Foreign Office does not regret evicting Chagos islanders | World news | guardian.co.uk

[Anubis]

It looks like Anonymous and the internet fredom of speech movement are making good on their threat to target companies who give in to US governmental pressure. PostFinance's site, PostFinance - Home, is down. This could get tasty.

[zigackly]

Defend WikiLeaks or lose free speech

BY DAN GILLMOR, MONDAY, DEC 6, 2010 17:45 ET

 

Journalists cover wars by not taking sides. But when the war is on free speech itself, neutrality is no longer an option.

 

The WikiLeaks releases are a pivotal moment in the future of journalism. They raise any number of ethical and legal issues for journalists, but one is becoming paramount.

 

As I said last week, and feel obliged to say again today, our government -- and its allies, willing or coerced, in foreign governments and corporations -- are waging a powerful war against freedom of speech.

 

WikiLeaks may well make us uncomfortable in some of what it does, though in general I believe it's done far more good than harm so far. We need to recognize, however, as Mathew Ingram wrote over the weekend, that "Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity." What our government is trying to do to WikiLeaks now is lawless in stunning ways, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald forcefully argued today.

 

These are also acts of outright censorship. No, Amazon is not bound by the First Amendment. But if it's bowing to government pressure, it's helping a panicked government tear up one of our most basic freedoms.

 

And, no, the government's campaign is not fully working. Internet "mirror" sites are springing up to host WikiLeaks' material faster than governments can take them down. But WikiLeaks is the beneficiary, in this respect, of a wide swath of support from people who will make it part of their life's mission to help prevent this particular instance of censorship from succeeding. How ready or able will they be to defend free speech every time it's threatened in the future?

 

The political class' frothing against WikiLeaks is to be expected, even if it's stirring up the kind of passion that almost always leads to bad outcomes. But what to make of the equally violent suggestions from people who call themselves journalists?

 

Two Washington Post columnists, among many others, have been racing to see who can be the more warmongering. The reliably bellicose Charles Krauthammer invited the U.S. government to kill Julian Assange, while his colleague Marc A. Thiessen was only slightly less bloodthirsty when he urged cyber attacks on WikiLeaks and any other sites that might be showing the leaked cables.

 

Of course, the New York Times, Washington Post and many other news organizations in the U.S. and other nations have published classified information themselves in the past -- many, many times -- without any help from WikiLeaks. Bob Woodward has practically made a career of publishing leaked information. By the same logic that the censors and their media acolytes are using against WikiLeaks, those organizations and lots of others could and should be subject to censorship as well. By Krauthammer's sick standards, the death squads should be converging soon on his own offices, as well as those of the Times and London's Guardian and more.

 

Media organizations with even half a clue need to recognize what is at stake at this point. It's more than immediate self-interest, namely their own ability to do their jobs. It's about the much more important result if they can't. If journalism can routinely be shut down the way the government wants to do this time, we'll have thrown out free speech in this lawless frenzy.

 

Like Clay Shirky, I'm deeply ambivalent about some of what WikiLeaks does, and what this affair portends. Governments need to keep some secrets, and laws matter. So does the First Amendment, and right now it's under an attack that could shred it.

[Pidge]

Whatever else Assange has or has not achieved, he has proved beyond doubt that concepts such as law, democracy and freedom of speech are dead in the western world as far as our governments are concerned.

 

Spot on.