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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."
The US military whistle blowers would have been MUCH better off going to the Project on Government Oversight, an organization which has a history of helping whistle blowers get out their stories and keep them out of jail. Other than continuing to link to Wikileaks and give them publicity, I have no clue as to how to help them.
get people killed by releasing it with out at least removing names
Who? Has anyone documented a case where this happened? from what I read WL were pretty careful in vetting the material.
Without names and places this is FUD.
Three Squirrels
I hear that said, but I hear politicians say these kinds of things all the time - PROVE to me that someone(s) got hurt/killed due to this release and I may feel otherwise, but for now, I believe they are being targeted for "pissing off" the powers that be.
Arguably though, the best way to avoid putting Afghan civilians and US troops out of harm is to have US troops go back to the US.
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?
Im not totally on Wikileaks side because they didn't take enough care to protect peoples names in the content they released.
They held back 15 thousand pages to protect people's names while they tried to sort through them. Google it.
They asked the pentagon to tell them which name to remove, the pentagon told them to go to hell.
Its one thing to release content for the world to see but its another thing to get people killed by releasing it with out at least removing names.
They did remove names, and they got no one killed. Try to find someone they got killed: You can't. The people who said they were gonna get people killed are the people who actively do indeed actually kill real people, have been for years, plan on doing it for years still. They fed you FUD, and you ate it all up.
That totally turned me off from Wikileaks.
Mission accomplished.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm guessing you haven't been to the airport since late 2001 or so.
They released documents that put Afghan civilians and US troops at risk.
No, they released documents that showed that US policy routinely massacres Afghan civilians and puts US troops at risk.
The pentagon said "releasing these documents puts the lives of the people we bomb at risk", it's transparent bullshit, but the sheeple say "baaaa". Do you remember that lil' Vietnamese girl that got napalmed and then spectacularly photographed, and the pentagon spent over a decade saying she got burned in a kitchen mishap? Did you believe their kitchen mishap cover story as much as you believe their "the truth is the enemy" cover story?
Remember how they told you Pat Tillman was shot by Taliban, and it turns out there were no Taliban there that day? Did you believe them when they told you a soldier in Afghanistan was shot by Taliban? Was it a believable lie?
How about the cute little blonde soldier that got knocked out in an attack on her convoy and the pentagon said she had fought valiantly to the last bullet of her sidearm, they attacked a hospital that had been trying to hand her over to "rescue" her, made up stories about the Iraqis treating her badly... did you believe that too?
Don't you think you should be less gullible and more informed?
This isn't protecting democracy, it's treason.
Yeah! Those Swedes are committing treason in the united states by letting that Aussie publish those documents! TREASON! And you don't sound like an idiot at all when you say that. Not at all.
You can't take the sky from me...
a problem with pogo.org is they are in inside the US.. so they are subject to National Security letters and gag orders.. if they had gone there - none of this stuff would have made the light of day except as a rumor before it was shut down.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
But I don't see the entirety of the US government sitting around thinking of how much they hate freedom and democracy and conspiring ways to end it.
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." -Henry Kissinger
CIA intervention for regime change:
1953 Iran
1954 Guatemala
1959 Cuba
1960 Democratic Republic of the Congo
1963 Iraq
1964 Brazil
1966 Republic of Ghana
1968 Iraq
1973 Afghanistan
1973 Iraq
1976 Argentina
1978 Afghanistan
1980 Iran
1980 El Salvador
1980 Cambodia
1980 Angola
1981 Nicaragua
1986 Phillippines
1992 Iraq
1993 Guatemala
That list will grow larger as more documents are declassified.
Imagine that you were just imagining that this might happen. Would you act on your imagination?
Also imagine that your wife sleepwalked to the kitchen drawer, picked up an pair of scissors and stabbed you in the eye while you slept.
Imagine your dog attacking you and killing you in front of your children.
I suggest you first take care of the clear and imminent danger presented by your wife and dog and maybe then consider wikileaks.
Still not convinced?
SUDO imagine you have a wife and a dog...
Let's be clear about this. America in all it's forms is an empire. They can dress it up and use the word 'democracy' all they want but in the end their plutocratic and hegemonic tendencies always shine through. America's ultimate goal is to control the world for the benefit of it's rich elite. Any evidence that shows this to the American people frightens the elite and all efforts - legal or illegal - will be used to stop it.
I realise this statement may be overused and has become abstract but; America is one step away from becoming a fascist state.
They continue to shoot the messenger. It wouldn't surprise me if the intelligence community turned that phrase literal.
I would be surprised: The US has long become more sophisticated than that. They understand that if you create a martyr, you could still be hearing about it two thousand years later. It's better to discredit them, make people think they're a narcissist, that they're reckless, that they're a rapist. Cut their funding, turn their friends against them, that's the kind of things I expect from the US; Straight up assassination I expect from Russians, their idea of subtlety is "exotic poisons".
You can't take the sky from me...
Yes, let's not reform the unconstitutional secret police who roam the earth assassinating people without trials, or torture people in secret prisons. Let's blame the people who talk about the secret police.
Assange is not ratting out FBI informants working in America. He's ratting out American atrocities in foreign lands. There is a huge difference.
My feeling exactly. Wikileaks has conflated the public "right to know" with an imaginary "need to know," and decided that this right is more important than the lives of the people named in the documents. IMAO, they've consistently shown a complete lack of common sense and a reckless disregard for the danger they're exposing people to.
You obviously don't know that they held back fifteen thousand pages because they contained names that ma or may not be innocent people. You hate them for something they're not guilty of. You've been successfully manipulated by well crafted propaganda, but don't feel bad, it happens to millions of people every day.
Yes, we all know of times when things have been classified because that's the easiest way to cover up mistakes, and things like that deserve leaking, but leaking the names and locations of people who are helping the US to fight terrorists is Simply Wrong.
And that is why wikileaks did not do that, but the pentagon says they did. So you'll hate them and refuse to listen. And it works sooooo well.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well to be fair, everybody is a massive douche, save you and me, and even thou art a bit of a douche.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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".
Who was the last person to be adequately punished for classifying something inappropriately?
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may
at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis
Dilbert RSS feed
Regardless of what you might think, the US law doesn't apply worldwide.
Dilbert RSS feed
A perfect example of an event so rare that it should never be used as a reason for a policy. Terrorist acts are just not that hard. Highway deaths are the equivalent of a 9/11 every few months. Random chance is better at killing people here than terrorists are. Anyone quaking in their boots over it still is a fucking moron.
That shouldn't have resulted in a single change of policy. Not the creation of the TSA or DHS. Not the PATRIOT act... nothing. It was a single event with no follow up by a pissant organization that never had any hope of doing us any real damage without us helping them along by spending billions of our own dollars.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Actually, I see more danger in not having people like them. Some of the stuff that they have released, like "Collateral Murder" are things that never should have been kept from the public. Its one thing to keep data secret about troop movements to keep troops safe... its another when the idea is just to "protect our reputation". Its entirely right that people see the realities of war... so we can be reminded why we shouldn't EVER have one.
Personally, I feel bad that I never donated to them when I had the chance. I will gladly send them some cash when they get something set up again. I would rather them have my money than the people running these horrid wars that never should have been started. Its good to see them exposing what a crime war is.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Remember guys that the government that was installed in Chile with a lot of US help was the same one that later set off a car bomb in Washington D.C. to get rid of an exiled political opponent.
Let's think about this..
US government officals are angry that Wikileaks is revealing their secret abuses of power.
So, they respond by publicly abusing thier power, where everyone can see, Because "Darn it, We just CANT let people know what we are REALLY doing here!"
I am at a complete loss for words.
The absurdity of the whole thing is staggering.
I don't like him at all.
Shoot the messenger! SHOOT THE MESSENGER!
I believe he is doing things for the wrong reason. He isn't releasing all this classified information because it is for the public good, he is doing it because it is an ego trip and makes him important, and because it hurts the US and he doesn't like the US.
Why, specifically, do you believe that?
I just don't think HIS reasons are the good ones he claims.
I don't think you know why you think that.
They really need a more moral spokesman
One that hasn't been accused of rape, only to have the accusation taken away in less than 24 hours bu not before it made the news?
and they need to get some rules that they follow for what they do and don't release. If the rule is "Any and everything," ok fine but make that up front and known. Say "We release anything, without regard for what harm that it may cause or if the information is of value to the public." However if that's not what you want to do, if you want to decide if things are important enough to release and to try to not cause any harm, then that's fine too, but you need to have a policy to that effect and stick to it. In the case of the classified cables that would mean only releasing those that showed something of public interest, and redacting names and so on. Ya that's a lot of work but that is what it takes to be responsible about it.
That is exactly what Wikileaks has been doing. The pentagon claims they haven't, but that's just a lie. You believed that lie, unfortunately.
As it stands Assange seems to want to play at being the good guy, but he's just a jackass that likes to pump his ego and get egg on teh face of those he doesn't like.
What do you base that on?
he's way too egotistical to realize that it would be much better off if he stepped down.
I do think the world needs things like Wikileaks, however it needs them run by people who actually care about the public good.
Yeah, look at some of the non-public-good, egotistical things he's done: Starting around 1997 he co-invented "Rubberhose deniable encryption," a cryptographic concept made into a software package for Linux designed to provide plausible deniability against rubber-hose cryptanalysis,[13] which he originally intended "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field."[14] Other free software that he has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache
Open source software to protect human rights worker? What a narcissistic jerk!
You can't take the sky from me...
Nevermind the actual purpose of terrorism;
Terrorism uses "Terror" to "Illicit changes".
The creation of the patriot act, and associated bundle of dung due to a terrorist act is exactly the kind of thing that terrorists want; to disrupt ordinary life after the fact.
The best way to combat terrorism, is to not react with terror.
The correct solution to that was to harden the cockpits. The incorrect solution was to spend a trillion dollars crushing the rights of US citizens, and another trillion dollars attacking two countries that had no nationals involved in the attack. Two trillion. So far. While our economy is in trouble.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think you mean the right to choose not to do business with someone that a third party doesn't approve of. A third party which can have you and your whole family assassinated, not really even bother to hide it (although not actually admitting it publicly) and not only get away with it, but have millions of apologists like you, Bigjeff5, appear to be who will cheer and argue about what a good thing it was and about how any innocent family members, neighbors or bystanders killed in the process were victims of the assassinated rather than the assassins because the assassinated were using them as "human shields". Some of us think that the free exercise of "the right to do business with someone you don't approve of" requires that you actually get to choose who you don't approve of rather than having extremely powerful entities tell you who you shouldn't approve of by use of punitive measures. Also, please, if you can rationally deny that being put on a US government watch list is a punitive measure then I would, by all means, love to hear the logic behind the denial.
For Christ's sake all the US Govt did was put him on a watch list
No, the LATEST thing the US did was put them on watchlists, causing them to lose access to their money. It's not the only thing they've done.
You can't take the sky from me...
Hardening the cockpits is one part of the correct solution. Possibly also training pilots not to negotiate with terrorists, even ones with hostages, since they apparently got into the cockpit of one of the planes by threatening to slit a flight attendants throat. The most important part of the correct solution though was to stop driving into the publics collective heads that if there's a hijacking that they shouldn't "try to be a hero". That was the security mantra before: "don't be a hero". The correct thing to do in a hijacking was always to sit tight, comply with the hijackers demands and try not to make waves. Anyone who tried to resist was an idiot who would just get themselves and others killed. You had to just sit tight and wait for the trained professionals to take care of the problem. Just look at movies about the topic. _Passenger 57_ springs to mind. There was one guy in it who tried to be a hero and grab one of the hijackers guns and just got bashed in the face for his efforts. What a fool, he should have just waited for the professional counter-terrorist to come and save him. If the 9/11 hijacking had taken place today, rather than 9 years ago, then probably, at the worst, all four planes would have ended up like flight 93. Combine a hardened cockpit with todays passengers and the captain would just have to announce over the intercom that hijackers are trying to break into the cockpit and a human swarm would take them down.
Fact check:
wikileaks did not facilitate the theft of a large number of confidential military documents.
wikileaks facilitated the distribution of a large number of confidential military documents that had been stolen.
This is what the source of the information should have done. Instead of burning a CD and sneaking it out, he should have gone to the Inspector General at the level above the unit that had the illegally classified information and reported its existence.
You are so, so very naive: After word leaked that one soldier (presumably Winfield) had spoken to military police, several platoon members retaliated. They confronted the informant and beat him severely - punching, kicking and choking him, then dragging him across the ground. As a last warning, Gibbs menacingly waved finger bones he had collected from Afghan corpses.
You can't take the sky from me...
right. for information to be safe and free, it has to be outside (jurisdictionally) of US borders.
my god. who would have thought we would be saying or thinking this. 10, 20, 30 years ago I never would have imagined.
from this generation onward, kids will grow up totally assuming they are being tapped, bugged and wire-sniffed. we really didn't have that feeling decades ago (I'm old enough to know). there was phone tapping and bugging, but not blatantly and not widespread. now its totally in-your-face. gag orders: how much more in-your-face can you be? the very concept of a 'you cant even talk to your lawyer' is so unamerican it just would not be believed 20 yrs ago. no one would take you seriously; they'd say that the 50's and mccarthyism is long behind us.
sigh.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
No. They put Moneybookers on the watch list. That's entirely understandable when you want to target their clientele for doing something that you don't like. Assange (I'm sure) has been on the watch list for a long time.
The problem with being on that watch list is that it severely limits who you can do business with. No US government entity, contractor, or anyone wanting a govt contract will do business with you.
That's why this is a severe douche maneuver by the US federal government. I understand trying to freeze the accounts of the people who are supporting terrorists and terror activities... But to use this as a tool to silence someone who is helping point out abuses and incompetence is abuse.
BTW... I'm an American... and I'm ashamed. I'll continue to do what I can in the ballot and among those that will listen... But it's a nasty uphill battle against people who just don't give a damn.
Dream on. Did you realize that there is still stuff from the frelling Spanish-American war that is classified? If I had ten grand in spare change lying around I might spend it on a lawyer for a FOIA query to see what's there, but let's face it, I don't so it's just going to stay that way.
Have you seen the process for a FOIA request? You need to know the exact title and location of the document that you want. You can't just ask for documents relating to the cover-up of the bombing of a wedding party, you need to ask for US Army Action Report 172047a, CIA Predator Flight 2491 Operator Transcripts, and NATO After Action Report 1772-Q42. If the information that you actually need is in Flight 2490 Operator Transcript instead you need to start the process all over again (if you ever find out where it really is). Making things worse, generally the indexes themselves are classified, and if you manage to get access to one it will be so highly redacted as to be useless.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Yes, thank god the US isn't quite at the level of Russia or China yet. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Exactly when will criticism of methods employed by the US government to stop dangerous activities be legitimate? Only when they involve assassinations through radioactive poisons or random incarcerations? Do you want the US to be the country it aspires to be, or merely something marginally better than the bottom of the autocratic barrel?
I would also argue that the activities described in the documents are acts against the the United States. They are counter-productive, create more enemies and tarnish the reputation of the United States by association. Why should they stay secret? They are already known to the local population, because they happened there. The only people who don't know about it are Americans. Again, why should the American people be kept in the dark about activities that create dangerous situtations for America?
Finally, how do you know that they actually did put Americans, Australians, British and others in danger? Because some politician told you so? Or because you read the documents yourself? If you didn't read them yourself, why do you trust the people who are indicted by the documents to tell you the truth about what is in the documents?
If the US is what it aspires to be, rather than just another country striving for survival by any means, there is no place for secrets that exist solely to prevent embarrassment.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
He helped the enemy fight us (attacking the will to fight a war is just as useful as killing soldiers or sabotaging material)
Oh hell fucking no. You didn't just go there. I won't argue whether the action of the soldier was justified or not, because that's a story for a different thread. But to argue that merely providing information that tarnishes the image of the country as being the same as actively sabotaging installations and killing people is exactly what lead to the Kent State shootings, and enabled Hitler to rise to power in Germany.
That argument is bullshit of the highest degree, because it not only makes it impossible to have a rational discussion about a war, but it also is a pretext to qualify anybody who questions the war as being a legitimate target for killing. I have seen the effects of that kind of logic, and it directly leads to killing anybody who is deemed objectionable by the one in power.
Get the fuck out my country. You are the enemy.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Case in point - Pentagon Papers about Vietnam, classified, leaked, published by major newspapers despite serious government objections. Back then, courts approved the journalist right to publish such documents. Has it been forgotten already?
We don't have laws to prevent distribution such secrets - instead, we have specific laws to protect the anonymous journalist sources, especially designed for cases such as this - because the society right to know information and freely talk about it stands above the government desire to 'protect' anything.
Copies of information is not stolen property in any way. No U.S. government documents are in possession of wikileaks, and as far as we know, none of this has been obtained by breaking&entering secure premises. If some individual leaks a secret (government classified data or cocacola secret recipe) that was available to him, then he may be liable for breaching whatever was binding him and requiring not to disclose it; but there is nothing prohibiting free citizens from distributing it further, it falls under first amendment, as per court cases regarding the same Pentagon Papers for example.
The problem with wikileaks is that they are having to do the job that "real" journalists in major news agencies would be supposed to do, but as they are failing the society, then amateurs such as Assange have to do it, and they sometimes do it in a half-assed way.
Why are the leak sources not going to the reporters to NY Times or BBC? It's just a symptom that they are failing in their eagerness to dig the truth, talk to possible informants, and take brave steps to guarantee that their sources would be protected. *That* would be journalism, instead of republishing bigcorp or government press releases.