US diplomatic cables to be dropped by wikileaks; US doing pre-emptive damage control

[Antithesis]

I find it hilarious that all this crying about the breach of privacy by this govt, is the same one that's breaching its own citizens privacy at the airports doing all those gropes/xray scans.



Gotta protect those diplomats, but not your own citizens, eh?

I thought the TSA was a privately run organization with a bit of influence from government.

[Olo401]

Reading on the lolguardian, is this true? If so it's hilarious.

Hey who else but America would enshrine war profiteering as a function of government?

[Olo401]

Also, if we're taking 15% in fees from any international money being put into the Afghan war effort, why are American taxpayers STILL being asked to pay billions of dollars a year as well? Time to slash or hold back funding in Congress I'd say - a perfect job for the incoming GOP-Tea Party coalition.

[Restrat]

I thought the TSA was a privately run organization with a bit of influence from government.

no, it's part of the dept. of homeland security now

[Antithesis]

no, it's part of the dept. of homeland security now

Well, shit.

[Vuitton]

In case anyone was wondering:

http://213.251.145.96/

[Mistress Stowastiq]

http://gizmodo.com/5705072/wikileaks-domain-name-killed-but-site-is-still-accessible?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&u tm_campaign=Feed:+gizmodo/full+(Gizmodo)

Also this WL Tweet:
http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/10750283525136384

WikiLeaks now available at
http://wikileaks.de/
http://wikileaks.fi/
http://wikileaks.nl/

[Demosthenes11]

holy fuck I love ron paul

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/45930.html

[Meph]

I know Im about 1 month too late, but just chiming in on the arrest warrent from us (sweden), the majority of the swedish press is under the impression that the swedish secret police (SÄPO) hooked him up with 2 of their informants, gave him a good time, and then filed a bogus charge, thus warranting for his arrest. Like its a big surprise the swedish government is licking US balls.

[Mistress Stowastiq]

Amazon evoked the wrath of Daniel Ellsberg
http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/open-letter-to-amazon

Open Letter to Amazon.com

by Daniel Ellsberg on December 3, 2010

To Customer Service and Jeff Bezos,

I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.

For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I have contacted Customer Service to ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices.

I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. Good: the broader and more immediate the boycott, the better.I hope that these others encourage their contact lists to do likewise and to let Amazon know exactly why they’re shifting their business. I’ve asked friends today to suggest alternatives. I’ve removed all links to Amazon from my site, and I’ll be exploring service from Powell’s Books, IndieBound, Biblio and others.

So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear—and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses—to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers, or perhaps to a site like antiwar.com, which has now appropriately ended its book-purchasing association with Amazon and called a boycott.

If you’d like to read further analysis of your cowardice, I suggest you see this excellent article by Glenn Greenwald.


Yours (no longer),

Daniel Ellsberg

A funny quote and one of my favorites from Julian out of the Guardian Q&A Chat with him today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog...ange-wikileaks

achanth
Mr Assange,
have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?

Julian Assange:
Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.

tburgi
Western governments lay claim to moral authority in part from having legal guarantees for a free press.
Threats of legal sanction against Wikileaks and yourself seem to weaken this claim.
(What press needs to be protected except that which is unpopular to the State? If being state-sanctioned is the test for being a media organization, and therefore able to claim rights to press freedom, the situation appears to be the same in authoritarian regimes and the west.)
Do you agree that western governments risk losing moral authority by
attacking Wikileaks?
Do you believe western goverments have any moral authority to begin with?
Thanks,
Tim Burgi
Vancouver, Canada

Julian Assange:
The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

Also from The Library Of Congress Blog:
http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/12/why...ing-wikileaks/

Why the Library of Congress Is Blocking Wikileaks

December 3rd, 2010 by Matt Raymond

The news media are reporting today, accurately, that the Library of Congress is blocking access to the Wikileaks site across its computer systems, including those for use by patrons in the reading rooms.

I wanted to provide here the same statement we’ve been giving to reporters and patrons who are asking about it:

“The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget today provided the guidance that “[f]ederal agencies collectively, and each federal employee and contractor individually, are obligated to protect classified information pursuant to all applicable laws, as well as to protect the integrity of government information technology systems.”

[Ragnus]

@Meph: Not surprising to me at all if that really is the case.

[Zeb]

ITT: Julian Assange = Starcade, countries = endgame linkshells, most of the people posting in this thead = shitty Alla posters who may or may not be members (not leaders) of those endgame linkshells, but insist windower users are the scum of the Earth and that everyone should be on an equal playing field.

[ZarakiKujata]

I know Im about 1 month too late, but just chiming in on the arrest warrent from us (sweden), the majority of the swedish press is under the impression that the swedish secret police (SÄPO) hooked him up with 2 of their informants, gave him a good time, and then filed a bogus charge, thus warranting for his arrest. Like its a big surprise the swedish government is licking US balls.

if SAPO is really involved w/ this, then this is straight out of Stieg Larsson's mind holy fuck (hackers, rape, international espionage and sweden?)

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

ITT: Julian Assange = Starcade, countries = endgame linkshells, most of the people posting in this thead = shitty Alla posters who may or may not be members (not leaders) of those endgame linkshells, but insist windower users are the scum of the Earth and that everyone should be on an equal playing field.

virginity is some crazy ass shit these days

[Cyn]

virginity is some crazy ass shit these days

I let out a hearty "wut" when I read that shit too.

[Cadsuane]

ITT: Julian Assange = Starcade, countries = endgame linkshells, most of the people posting in this thead = shitty Alla posters who may or may not be members (not leaders) of those endgame linkshells, but insist windower users are the scum of the Earth and that everyone should be on an equal playing field.

Even if people were still playing FFXI and this analogy were somewhat topical, you would still be coming off as a neckbearded aspie.

[Rhinox]

Don't knock on neckbeards asshole

[Zeb]

virginity is some crazy ass shit these days

This is pretty funny coming from the guy who has posted a books worth of typing from the rage he has that a tv show is fucking up his favorite comic book storyline.

[Demosthenes11]

do not fucking shit up this thread with cockbaggery

[aduidarnenye]

Skipped most of the thread so I probably missed a lot of stuff.

I was watching HLN during my break at work (yeah, I know HLN sucks). The anchor was asking people what they thought of the Wikileaks thing and whether people should have access to this information. A caller from Alabama called in and started yelling that Julian Assange needs to be prosecuted because the leaks put American troops in Afghanistan in danger. He went on for a while about how anyone who puts American troops in danger needs to be arrested and killed and so on before the anchor managed to cut him off.

I was wondering, however, has there been anything in the leaks that does put troops, or anyone for that matter, in danger?

I've not read all the cables, only a few - including a hilarious one about the CBC producing anti-American TV shows, so perhaps I missed something like that. Most of what I have read, however, is just diplomats making embarrassing remarks about other countries and some really weird assumptions about foreign nations. It all seems to be about stuff that happened in the past or has nothing to do with current troop activities.