Slashdot Mirror
WikiLeaks, Money, and Ron Paul
Another day, another dozen WikiLeaks stories, several of which revolve around money. PayPal has given in to pressure to release WikiLeaks funds, though they still won't do further transactions. Mobile payment firm Xipwire is attempting to take PayPal's place. "We do think people should be able to make their own decisions as to who they donate to." PCWorld wonders if the WikiLeaks' money woes could lead to great adoption of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency system we've discussed in the past. Meanwhile, Representative Ron Paul spoke in defense of WikiLeaks on the House floor Thursday, asking a number of questions, including, "Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?" The current uproar over WikiLeaks has prompted Paul Vixie to call for an end to the DDoS attacks and Vladimir Putin to break out a metaphor involving cows and hockey pucks.
We don't have to wonder, since the SecDef has said that no US soldiers, missions, or security were harmed or jeapordized by the Wikileaks releases.
So what are they so mad about?
Being made to look like spoiled children, that's what. Being shown to be backstabbing hypocrites. This is the political equivalent of being pantsed on the world stage.
There are a small handful of votes where Ron Paul has voted in a way that would be upsetting to left-liberals (gay adoption in DC comes to mind), but aside from that, I don't think there is anyone in DC more passionately committed to personal freedom than Ron Paul. The strong support for Wikileaks is just another example.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
How can the man that created maps, to which all of the above applies, say these things with a straight face?.
Vixie makes some good points about the rule of law and how DDOS attacks both by supporters and enemies of Wikilieaks are unjustified. Yet I can't help but wonder what the outcome would be if everyone just went back to business and let the courts settle everything out. Wouldn't this mean that Wikileaks is taken down for now, Assange's ass is ripped up in court for the next ten years, and even if he wins in the end (in the unlikely case he manages to afford a year-long court battle), Wikileaks will have utterly failed to reach its goals?
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
- Desmond Tutu
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
That's why Rand Paul has arrived on the scene to take-over for his dad when he retires from politics. And of course there's other Ron Paul types in congress, just not as visible (they didn't make three attempts to become president).
The reporters who revealed the Watergate scandal were protected.
Ditto Edward R Murrow when he revealed secret documents of the Unamerican Committee.
Likewise the reporters at wikileaks should be protected. Arrest the government employees that stole the documents, not the press.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I've never understood why the rest of the world doesn't seem to have an EFTPOS system that doesn't rely on America
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I like that guy more by the minute.
Seriously, the US has caused enough trouble around the globe for a century, let someone else fuck up the planet for a change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Please stop.
You say nothing damning? What cables have you been reading?
In July 2009, a confidential originating from the U.S. State Department ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on the leader of the United Nations, Secretary general Ban Ki-moon, and other top U.N. officials.[1] The intelligence info the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information, passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
In 2009, the U.S. manipulated — via spying, threats, and bribes — the Copenhagen global climate change summit to prevent any agreement to be reached leading to the overall failure of summit.
According to a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul, Vice President of Afghanistan, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was found carrying $52 million in cash that he “was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.”
There's more but that's what I found in about 2 minutes on wikipedia.
And the government works for us, they have no right to secrets. It is completely different from a private citizen's communications being leaked.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
The reporters who reveled the watergate scandal, also kept lots of it secrets and didn't divulge into every piece of paper the republican's created that year, only the parts that referenced the scandal.
Wikileaks simply dumped the entire contents onto the web. So far there hasn't been anything really damning about them, except the fact that diplomatic relationships are now shattered across the world.
That's why those of us who are paying attention compare Wikileaks to the Pentagon Papers, not to Watergate. The Pentagon Papers were also a verbatim dump of masses of documents which contained a lot of mundane stuff which Beacon Press published, in addition to the juicier excerpts published by the NYT.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
a diplomats very job is to be a legal spy in a given country. he won't run around with a gun, but he will be learning anything and everything he can to make sure his country has the information they may or may not need. Most diplomats are also in charge of real spies. either directly or indirectly.
2009 global climate, sound like normal diplomacy to me. See China manipulating people to boycott the nobel peace prize.
no american has a right to detain or control the leader of another country if he is carrying armed weapons, cash, or even illegal drugs. now proper authorities might be contacted so he can be limited movements, but he had to be let go as he wasn't a threat to the Embassy or it's personnel. Are you saying that it is right for American's to interrupt and arrest foreign officials, because that is what it is you are saying.
Do you have any idea what diplomats actually do? or are you another moron. Do you have any idea on the limits of their abilities? Because it sounds like you are just another moron shouting out that it is wrong when you can't even under stand the concept of sovereign foreign countries.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Don't you start. This discussion has been done a million times before on /., particularly around the time of the Microsoft antitrust trials.
There is more than one definition of monopoly, and only one of those is "has 100% market share". The word can be - and frequently is - used to mean "has so much market share that the market is distorted".
In economics, a monopoly (from Greek...) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Paypal and Amazon both gave in to US government pressure to eliminate their services to WikiLeaks. Since WikiLeaks depends on internet presence and donations to exist, it's no different than cutting the power to a house. In this case, it signaled to any other internet provider that they would no longer be friends to the US government, which per the norm, acts like a local mafia boss in enforcing its will in the neighborhood.
The United States differs from other States only in that it does not overtly tell someone to shut up. It threatens charges. It stays quiet while members of it's government and celebrity punditry call for assassination. It sends a few spooks around to anyone connected with you. It's a base form of terrorism, and differs from the KGB only in that it has to look like an accident if they decide to eliminate you. They like plausible deniability because the miserable pro-authoritarian sycophants like you can pretend that those things don't happen, and you'll continue to support the government regardless of how badly they ignore the laws they are supposed to be following.
Take a look at the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo. What is the effective difference of the Chinese government throwing him in prison, and the US leaning on Sweden to bring back trumped up charges so Assange could be detained while they build a bullshit case to do the same thing? We just have better PR.
Honestly, you're fucking pathetic. You are everything that is wrong with democracy today, because you don't even know what freedom of speech is, or why it's important. I hope you end up in the society you dream of, protesting the latest corporate takeover of your publicly funded infrastructure from your "Free Speech Zone" like the coward you are in order to keep what little freedom they decide to let you keep for the time being.
"The big leap upon Assange and the attempt to squelch Wikileaks came when they announced they got material that would make an important bank go keel up." - by Opportunist (166417) on Sunday December 12, @08:56AM (#34528452)
Amen, & I agree, 110% - & I know who will be getting MY VOTE next election (provided the man runs again that is, & that's Ron Paul).
Assange didn't "rape" anyone either (after all - you CAN'T RAPE THE WILLING, & the "law" used against him? It was JUST MADE, tailor-made in fact, & "gee, I wonder BY WHO?" (can you say what Opportunist did above that I quoted? I knew you could!).
Assange is merely the messenger, like the press, and he can't be condemned for merely conveying the information given he after he verifies it... that? That is the JOB OF THE PRESSES!
Assange didn't steal ANY CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS (though his sources MAY have, & he doesn't have to divulge them either, just like the press).
Additionally: The entire "housing debacle" isn't over yet, there are STILL PILES OF FORECLOSURES WAITING TO HAPPEN... this? This entire "economic depression"??
It is ENTIRELY ARTIFICIALLY MANUFACTURED, economically too, imo @ least!
RECIPE FOR DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN THE U.S.A. BY BANKERS & "THE POWERS THAT BE":
You start with offshoring to weaken/erode the middle-class (who largely & imo, foolishly, leveraged themselves to the hilt with mortgages & credit cards (making them "easy meat" to destroy, especially on hedge funds + variable rate mortgages - they can "call in the mark of due" at ANY TIME on those is why)).
You leave the middle class, with NO good jobs (with payrates well beyond "hand-to-mouth" ones that merely pay your rent & utilities + food/the basics), & good luck trying to afford a mortgage (especially a variable rate one).
APK
P.S.=> No, I think the "day of 'big money'" is coming to a RAPID HALT, & nobody knows it better than the "big money" being threatened here, and what do they do in retaliation?
LOL, the same as they always do (as it's the ONLY THING THEY UNDERSTAND to try to "cover up" their b.s. & other shenanigans, that come AT YOUR EXPENSE U.S. TAXPAYERS (can you say "bank bailouts"? Yes, again, I "knew you could")) - they attempt to "ad hominem attack" & discredit those that threaten their "empire" (what a sad bunch of pricks, seriously - money doesn't make you a better person, period! It's absolutely necessary though, for guys with "2 inch pencils" that couldn't get a woman otherwise)... apk
A government will advocate for freedom of the press as long as that freedom is used to embarrass other governments and further it's own interests. Once the those things get turned around and focused on the advocate country they quickly call it espionage and treason. If Wikileaks focused on China and their members were hunted down in other countries and then Jailed in China, the state department would call them political prisoners and demand their release. Citizens of the United States should listen very carefully to what their representative have to say about this issue. It will show exactly what kind of freedom they support. Freedom of speech or freedom to agree.
Seriously, read the Bitcoin technical paper. It's short and easy to read.
Paid Q&A/Research
I agreed with everything in your post--except for one word in your title. Communist!? Seriously?
Overwhelmingly it's been the supposed conservative defenders of freedoms that have been throwing a fit over Wikileaks, or inferring that Assange should be assassinated (one of those clowns was advisor to Canada's current prime minister, who heads the so-called Conservative party).
Call them neo-conservative if you must, as libertarian Ron Paul did in his speech.
Meanwhile, the same neo-conservatives are labelling Wikileaks supporters as leftist, anarchists, socialists, communists, or terrorist sympathizers intent on disrupting the world order. Yet on CBC, Canada's supposed pinko socialist news source (according to neo-conservatives, anyway), comments left on their wikileaks news articles are overwhelmingly in support of Wikileaks.
Seriously, I hope you don't think suppression of freedoms is a strictly "left" trait, the "right" is doing its best to do it better.
They're not conservative or liberal. They're authoritarian, just like Stalin.
Sure, if you want to go back to before the Revolution communism meant something else, but I'm not trying to convince an academic in some paper. I'm trying to convince a citizen that they're seriously fucking up the whole concept of democracy and the importance of freedom of expression.
Step away from this "left versus right" thing. In reality, what difference is there between Communism and Fascism? Does it make a difference whether a small elite group rules the state which rules commerce, or whether a small elite group rules commerce which rules the state? What if that group is an enlightened oligarchy, or a backwards junta? I suppose you could make a very weak argument that intellectual genocide has more merit than ethnic genocide, but I wouldn't agree. They are both two sides of the same coin: murder to create order.
The measurements of government cannot be drawn on a line graph. Even Canada has been waging it's war on personal freedom through the suppression of drug use, which is the very definition of totalitarianism: prosecuting someone for exercising personal freedom.
No, your interpretation is wrong as well as wired translation. Corect English idiom of Putin words would be "pot calling the kettle black".
Money represents amounts of work. Why would the availability of precious metals be relevant to that? Indeed, the obsession with the gold standard pretty much caused WWII. Why repeat History's most egregious mistakes? Oh, right, because facts and reality, don't matter any more.
Questions to consider:
Below text is quoted, not my own
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The problem is, every time we've tried an isolationist policy, the rest of the world messes things up and drags us in. The famous example is WW2, when Americans (but not Roosevelt) were extremely reticent to get involved, and then Japan attacked us anyway. Hitler would have eventually too, if he'd reached his goals.
But it's been that way from the beginning. In the lead-up to the war of 1812, the British started interfering with American trade and capturing our sailors. We either needed to protect our interests or lose them. Although the oceans are big, it is not enough to isolate us from our neighbors. Now less than ever, since they are so easy to cross.
It is a hard problem and I don't know the solution, but I don't think strict isolationism is the answer. The problems of the rest of the world will come back to us one way or another.
Qxe4
Yeah, Ron Paul is a total loon. He's so crazy that I've heard him consistently espouse:
1. Having a government that operates within its budget. ...
2. Having a government that respects personal freedoms by not subjecting airline passengers to being irradiated and/or fondled.
3. Being honest about the Iraq war and how we got into it.
4. Ending our country's imperialistic bent by drawing down on our military deployments.
5. Taking a serious look at the secretive central banking system that is given extraordinary power to fuck with our economy with little oversight.
Just to get it straight, you're 99% against crazy whacky shit like this, right?
Given what you've posted so far, I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on your seeming out-of-left-field attack on Rand Paul. Didn't his recent political opponent actually dig up some dirt that Rand Paul was ANTI-CHRISTIAN? I think that Rand Paul then gave the required "I'm a good Christian" response to that, but my guess is the guy is probably an agnostic.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?