OP/ED by BigRed
Unless you’ve been under a rock lately its safe to say you heard about Wikileaks coming out with a new round of government information. Some classified some almost classified.
In a nut shell Wikileaks is a serious big dog when it comes to info on what’s going on in the world due to the fact a lot of what the get is from the "inside". So yes, there is some whistle blowing going on. Or someone’s a rat.
The big claim to fame was when back in about April 2010 they released a video of an ’07 incident in Iraq where civilians got killed by U.S. forces. A few months later they came out with the "Afghan War Diary" which is a compilation of damn near 77,000 documents on the war in Afghanistan. Shortly after that they dropped the "Iraq War Logs". That one was about 400,000 documents, both of which were never available for the public.
Now Wikileaks has been around since ’06 and has come up on the radar prior to the Afghan War Diary release in good ways and bad. They’ve had censorship issues with China, Thailand, Australia, Germany and the U.K. Now when I say censorship issues its not some you can’t show boobs on tv type stuff. This is behind closed door government secret "I’d tell you but then I have to kill you" type stuff. Well, that might be a stretch but you get the point.
Now some plus sides for them would be they received awards from Amnesty International(’09) and Index on Censorship(’08). And due to the new happening with the release of new cables Ecuador made an offer to Julian Assange the founder of the site basically free passage to relocate to the country to live and conduct business there.
Now the new round of document leaks has damn near everybody in the U.S. Government down right pissed. Some want them brought up on espionage charges, some are calling them a terrorist organization and that they are a threat to national security. The majority of the docs are unclassified, followed by "confidential" and only 15,000 are dubbed secret. Yup, 15,000 is the low end. This round of leaks is just over 251,000 cables. These cable(documents) have text on countries that are allies and countries who are not so much on our good side. Things regarding Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and both Koreas. There’s tons of other countries on the list.
Now here’s a quick background on founder Julian Assange. Before starting the site he was a math and physics student, computer programmer and a hacker. He was busted in ’91 and he pleaded guilty to about 24 hacking charges in Australia. Now here’s the funny part, on sunday the web site Wikileaks was hit with a distributed denial of service attack. Better known as DDoS. Now when I first heard this I thought of our buddies over at Anonymous. So I do a little poking around and it looks like they didn’t. So far the credit goes to Jester. And his reasoning for doing it is so simple, and beautifully patriotic. Ready for this? He did it because he feels it puts our troops in harms way. Somebody buy this man a beer. Or a pony. That just sounds like good old patriotism to me. I’m loving it.
Now here’s the part where I give my opinion and tell you what grinds my gears. I started out thinking Wikileaks was a bunch of no good god damn rats. Now they have come out with some rather good pieces in the past so I’ll give them credit for that. But, and its a BIG but, I can’t get over some of there past leaks. This new round included. I understand wanting to know what goes on with in government, and keeping tabs, poor mans checks and balances.
But when you put troops and people at an added risk, for what? That’s what grinds my gears. Rats.
I aprreciate some of the things Wikileaks done in the past.
But the last publications are ridiculous.
I´m german and what they told about our politicians isn´t any thing new.
This time it´s like High School: “Have you heard what they told about you?”
and hoping that they start a fight.
I don´t see any other reason than PR, to publish these things.
Julian Assange is a marked man. I mean, really..can someone tell me how he’s going to survive this? Even Ecuador withdrew it’s offer to allow him to emigrate. His home country has already admitted they’d probably charge him with several crimes if he returned to Australia. Sweden and the Interpol are searching him on a rape charge. The U.S. and it’s allies can simply squeeze and squeeze, this guys got nowhere to go. A quick reminder to anyone, whether you’re Bobby Fischer or Max Hardcore or anyone else deranged enough to draw severely bad attention: you don’t want ENTIRE GOVERNMENTS to want you “removed”.
If I ran into Julian Assange I’d simply say to him “Dude, there is NO future”
Julian Assange/Wikileaks are good people and should go to Switzerland, a neutral nation, for help.
If This Be Treason …
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp
Nov 30, 2010
… but, of course, it isn’t.
Julian Assange isn’t an American citizen. Wikileaks isn’t an American organization. Even if we accept the logic of state, neither Assange nor Wikileaks owe any duty of loyalty to the US government. Where no loyalty is due, no betrayal is possible. Whatever else they might be, the Wikileaks “dumps” of information deemed “classified” by the US government aren’t “treason” (as the usual suspects keep calling them) by any reasonable definition of that word.
Nor, contra US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s surreal claim, is the latest Wikileaks release “an attack on the international community.” If such a “community” exists, identifying it with the parasite states sitting atop its regional populations is like designating canine breeds on the basis of the ticks which infest each dog’s fur.
And talk about the pot calling the kettle black! It was Clinton, not Assange, who directed US State Department employees to spy on United Nations officials including but not limited to permanent members of the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon himself in what looks an awful lot like an identity theft scheme right out of the latest crime news headlines. If the UN’s member states do indeed compose the “international community,” Clinton has cast herself in the role of neighborhood burglar.
But, if this be treason, make the most of it.
The penchant of state actors for secrecy stems from the same motives as any other criminal’s desire to keep his deeds out of the public eye. Their threats against those who might reveal their secrets are of precisely the same nature as the warnings of any child rapist to his victims: “Don’t tell, or YOU will get in trouble.”
We’ve been here before, many times. Not many remember, but the most vehement western objections to Russia’s “October Revolution” were concerned not with nature of Bolshevism but with this language in Lenin’s Decree on Peace:
We have to fight against the hypocrisy of the governments, which, while talking about peace and justice, actually carry on wars of conquest and plunder. Not one single government will tell you what it really means. But we are opposed to secret diplomacy and can afford to act openly before all people.
While Russia’s former allies did indeed oppose communism and desire an active Eastern Front (to reduce pressure on the Western Front), they were outright desperate to hide the details of their complicity in the ongoing disaster now known as World War One. Like vampires, politicians will choose gunfire over sunlight every time.
The subsequent actions of the new Russian state constitute an existence proof of the incompatibility of political government and transparency. Forced to choose between truth and power, the Bolsheviks chose power. Their regime and its spinoffs became (pardon the pun) the gold standard for secretive government.
The strength of Wikileaks is that it faces no similar choice. It’s not a state, nor do its principals evince any intention of making it one. Truth is its entire portfolio, and this drives the Hillary Clintons of the world insane. It threatens their aspirations to unquestioned power. It forces them to explain themselves to the rest of us: To the serfs who, as the politicians see things, exist for the sole purpose of footing the bill in money and in blood for those aspirations.
Which is exactly how it should be. “Treason” to and “betrayal” of the state is service to humanity. Wikileaks is your friend. Hillary Clinton is your enemy. Never forget that.
George W Bush is responsible for way more American Soldiers deaths than wikileaks.
Everyone wants Assange’s head,40 years ago they wanted Daniel Ellsberg’s. I dont think Ellsberg’s document leaks got anyone killed. What we may never know is if the outing of Valerie Plame got any CIA agent or asset killed, if someone was, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove et al should be indicted for treason.
Information wants to be free. The more the merrier I say. Not that any of the documents released are especially interesting or surprising as such, other than the lack of professionalism and competence amongst its authors.