why is there no wikileaks thread?

stevied

Well-known member
Oooh, a Doomsday File... very nice!

When the talk of assassination heated up, Assange and his team released an insurance file to their allies. This heavily encrypted file contains damaging material on British Petroleum, Guantanamo Bay and other matters. It sits on computers, awaiting the 256-digit key. The WikiLeaks team has appropriately called this the Doomsday File.

From Empire Unmasked by Vijay Prashad

http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad12152010.html
 
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stevied

Well-known member
Yes, Bradley Manning is having a bad time. And, you're right, he is being ignored. Although, I saw a report by Glen Greenwald on Democracy Now the other day about his treatment.
 

nochexxx

harco pronting
BareBones;24943did anyone see that john pilger doc the other day said:
inevitably depressing, essential viewing. here's the link

must confess i was one of the idiots that fell for the Obama deception.
 

adruu

This Is It
democracy now is the standard for marginal american political discourse.

i really dont see the point in torturing this child, but i guess im old fashioned
 

Dr Awesome

Techsteppin'
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
What was this guy thinking?

what was daniel ellsberg thinking? what was jeffrey wigand thinking? what was mark felt (aka deep throat) thinking? what is any whistleblower ever thinking? my hat goes off to him, for better or worse. my hat goes off to him, for better or worse, and there've been both.

speaking of ellsberg, here's a link to him on colbert the other night, as well as some other bits on assange & wikileaks (I seem to recall that daily show & colbert clips won't play if you're in the UK for copyright reasons so apologies in advance if that's the case)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also: I've been surprised at how bloodthirsty the media coverage has been here. I suppose I shouldn't be but calls for execution or worse, assassination are unusual even for fox news etc. and if it's not that it's politicos talking about making up new laws in order to have something to convict him of. I wonder if it was as bad for ellsberg - I think not, I know he was in a lot of trouble and went underground (though only for a couple weeks if I remember) but he was also very much a dissenter from within the establishment; american, former marine, longtime defense analyst and a player in those circles - he was actually a hawkish, cold warrior type before the war. in other words, someone who couldn't just be written off, and also someone who played by a well-defined set of rules, even if he chose to break them. whereas assange is pretty much straight out of a William Gibson short story, a hacker with that ethos & mindset, and targeting leaders of leaderless, faceless movements is the utmost futility. he was stupid to make himself a target, that was a bad mistake, but chop one head - hopefully not literally - and a thousand more will spring up in its place, as already demonstrated. it might be amusing watching folks try to shove everything back into pandora's box if it wasn't so alternatively depressing and infuriating. it's like all the hounds baying for assange's blood have just slept through everything that's happened since about 1998 or so. whatever, I'm sure all this has been said more eloquently by others elsewhere, I haven't been paying close attention, but I needed to get off my chest the feeling of watching this bloody absurd spectacle unfold.

and even tho focusing on assange himself is a distraction from the actual issues at hand, it will be a black mark against 10 downing if it colludes in this sham of an extradition.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Ha, my brother was just telling me about a Wikileaks mirror site he hosts, run from a server in Iceland, that was the target of the DOS attack that blacked out Iceland's internet access for six hours last week.

Wonder who was behind that.

Funny old world.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
and even tho focusing on assange himself is a distraction from the actual issues at hand, it will be a black mark against 10 downing if it colludes in this sham of an extradition.

If may be quite difficult for them not to collude with the Swedish one. If the sexual assault charges look remotely credible, I don't see how they can refuse.

These Euro-extradition orders are designed to make it extradition within EU as simple as possible - even though the rule was brought in with terrorists in mind, it's hardly ever used for that. Packing him off to Sweden will also let the UK wash their hands of him without handing him directly to the Yanks.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
Yes, Bradley Manning is having a bad time. And, you're right, he is being ignored. Although, I saw a report by Glen Greenwald on Democracy Now the other day about his treatment.

not a single American politician has anything to gain by seeing him treated well or fairly... saying anything (about his right to a certain standard of treatment, that he is innocent til proven guilty etc) would be political suicide.. people like Hillary and Obama see him as an opportunity to show how tough and patriotic they are... and the fringe right really do want to see him executed...

this administration has shown they will cave to pressure from the far right (Shirley Sherrod anyone?) over and over... any sign of kindness to an accused military traitor will be seen as weak liberal bullshit from the majority of the country... so, while treating Manning humanely would be the civil thing to do, i don't see it happening...
 

nochexxx

harco pronting
Does that mean some political leverage could be applied to his case from this side?

judging by the McKinnon case i'd say no, but at least there had been valid attempts for his trial to be held in the UK. what's really sad about Manning's case is we're not even allowed a sniff. no mainstream outlets are touching this with a barge pole.

Assuming we lived in a fantasy world where anyone in a position of authority in this country would actually want to do so...

yes, exactly.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
He has been charged with illegally obtaining 150,000 secret US government cables and handing more than 50 of them to an unauthorised person.

Someone help me out here - what exactly is a "cable" when it's at home? Seems like a curiously archaic term - is it just a catch-all for emails, phone calls, photocopied memos etc., that sort of thing? I assume U.S. diplomats and generals no longer communicate via telegram.
 
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