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Wikileaks Donations Account Shut Down
Scrameustache writes "The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government. Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist. The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan."
Wikileaks is a great project, but its not too clear how people can help them.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Why doesn't this guy just yell "Banzai", leak out the rest of the documents, and survive for 5 minutes while hundreds of copies are made on the internet?
At this point its just pointless bickering, if this guy releases the rest of what he's got, the US will have no real interest in him anymore I would think - because even if he 'mysteriously dies when his server mysteriously explodes', the copies of the document would have still been spread around like wildfire.
It is funny (and, in a way sad) that the same country that sponsored all those radio stations I used to listen to as a young girl for (freedom-)free information during the Cold war years from behind the Iron curtain is now trying to stomp out a website that does exactly the same.
Ah, dreams of my youth, when did you wither away?
I have noticed that the US government is really taking the wrong approach to this, personally, whenever I hear about wikileaks in the news I always go and browse there for a while (and if I had the cash I'm donate), but otherwise I honestly don't even remember its there.
No, I never said "not listen". I read and have read wikileaks and, for the most part, it does a great service. I have read editorials by Assange. I've seen interviews. I can form my own opinions without the help of CNN.
Piss off.
Gone!
I have read editorials by Assange. I've seen interviews. I can form my own opinions without the help of CNN.
Piss off.
You say "Assange. He is egotistical tool", you say you believe that opinion to be your own. Can you say why you believe what you believe, aside from claiming that you can?
You made two claims, prove t me you know what you believe:
1- What has Julian Assange done that proves he is egotistical? How is he demonstrably selfish and self-centered?
2- To whom is he a tool? Who holds that tool and to what purpose?
You can't take the sky from me...
My brother, a combat medic, was with a group that was being attacked. He was in the room when a sergeant told a soldier to stick his head out the window to see what was up. The kid stuck his head out the window and got a bullet to the face, and the sergeant turned without a word and walked into the other room. My brother had to clean the mess up.
If you google the name of the deceased soldier the reports say he was killed by an IED. His family does not know the truth of how he died.
Talk to any soldier that has seen action and ask them if they saw anything get covered up, I'm willing to bet you won't find any soldier who has been deployed that can say "no".
I think there was an exception, fairly recently...
Again and again and again I hear this claim.
The only concrete example I've ever seen was one local warlord who was named and later killed.
of course lots of people were being executed before that because of rumors of being informants, and people were killed after that over rumors of being informants.
The taliban don't really care about being accurate.
They're happy to kill anyone as long as it send the message "don't collaborate with the americans"
Toppling Saddam Hussein was a completely idiotic thing to do. It was done so unter falsificated facts for the false reasons given. The main reasons given were Iraq's WMDs, which the weapon's inspectors told again and again wouldn't exist, and which failed to materialize afterwards, and for an allegedly collaboration with al-Qaida, which didn't materialize either, and which everyone (except in the U.S. apparently) was knowing was a figment of imagination. Saddam Hussein was during most of his reign an outspoken non-religious dictator, affiliated with the Ba'ath party which grew out of a christian founded, nationalistic-arab, socialist movement (ba'ath is arab and means "people") -- everything but a muslim fundamentalist. After 1991 he tried to steer away from Socialism to a more traditionalist arab ideology including embracing Islam, but no one was taking it serious, and he still hat christian people in his inner circle, like Tariq Aziz (christian name: Mikhail Yuhanna).
So the arab and the islamic world, knowing the WMDs were nonexistant and the link to al-Qaida fabricated, came to the conclusion, that only two reasons were valid: control of Iraqi Oil, and battling Islam at all cost -- not the way you make friends in the region. The U.S. and its allies were seen as the aggressors, taking on everything arab and islamic -- arab property, arab traditions, arab nationality, arab pride.
But -- you say, toppling a murderous dictator is right? Wrong. Helping the Iraqi people to get rid of Saddam Hussein on their own would have been right. Supporting the insurgencies in the southern part of Iraq would have been right. With the kurdish North it worked, Northern Iraq was no longer ruled by Saddam Hussein by 2003. But the South was neglected, and arab people saw themselves abandoned -- so it was natural for them to see the U.S. as primarily anti-arab.
If the U.S. would have waited another few years, Saddam Hussein would have been toppled anyway -- by the Iraqis themselves. Saddam Hussein was powerless already. He had nothing anymore to bribe his own ruling junta. He had to play games to reserve some street cred with his neighbours, but had to cave in whenever the Security Council of the U.N. was getting serious. The next big insurgence would have brought him down, either by the insurgents or by his own inner circle trying to hold on power on their own and sacrifying him as a scapegoat.
What are the lessons for the dictators around him? Caving in to UN sanctions and giving up on your weapons will make you weak and prone to the next invasion. Caving in to demands to stop the development of WMDs will make you weak and prone to the next invasion. If you want to stay in power, it is important to get WMDs as soon as possible, at all cost. North Korea and Iran have learned their lessons. North Korea is nuclear power since 2005, and the Iran is apparently doing everything to become one. Saudi-Arabia has an option to buy atomic bombs from Pakistan. The other Gulf states signed a contract in 2006 to develop civilian atomic facilities. Great job, United States!