Wikileaks News

[noises]

Assange bailed (again)

For the second time this week, a UK court has said it will bail Assange. Perhaps this time, "bail granted" means they'll actually let him leave solitary confinment. Who knows, maybe this time, his bail conditions will even see him released from prison! Fingers crossed!

Runner-Up: Julian Assange - Person of the Year 2010 - TIME < Time magazine article declaring Julian Assange runner up in Time's person of the year. Check out the comments, mostly "never reading or buying Time magazine again, or what a fraud, or Time should be ashamed of themselves.

why?
In snub to WikiLeaks, Zuckerberg wins TIME Person of Year 2010 - Computerworld Blogs

Probably because the guy who "won" only got 5% of the votes Julian did. And never mind the fact, the "winner" has been slammed over and over again for his social media site that collects private information for the use of the CIA. What a joke. The guy who leaks information ON the government TO the internet and gets over 380,000 votes is declared runner up to a guy who leaks information TO the government ON the internet and gets 18,000 votes?

Oh that's right, Time magazine is a US publication. I guess the only real surprise there is that Time included him in the voting at all. Here's an example of democracy in action, US media style.
Poll Results - Who Will Be TIME's 2010 Person of the Year? - TIME

Notice how the guy who got the most votes came second to the guy who came tenth. Yes, tenth. Read it and weep.

[noises]

C-span 3 is streaming the wikileaks debate in the house judiciary committee, looking to see if they can change any laws and charge Julian retrospectively.
C-SPAN3 Live Stream - C-SPAN

tune in now to watch.

[noises]

House judiciary hearing opening comments protecting wikileaks. Looks like no charges from the US. see link above to watch along

[noises]

wordymcwriter Every One
Sen Hearing to #wikileaks "we have an over abundance of over classification"
1 minute ago

Sen Hearing to #wikileaks "secrecy is the hallmark of totalitarianism"
50 seconds ago

Sen Hearing to #wikileaks "there is far too much secrecy in the executive branch, this puts the american democracy at risk"

[Joit]

Something i do think about at this Live Spawn Discussion.
They only talking about the Leaks and the published Documents
and her Security.

But they DONT Talk about, what is in the Documents,
and that are Informations what probatly do belong the Public,
and not for, to keep them classified.
Thats how our bureaucracy works, they do need for any Event
a new Instane.

At last someone raised a good Point.
They need to decide between spying on them and releasing Informations.

Right now its ongoing and still interesting, because they mentioned some of the Documents.

Seems J. Assange is free until 11. Jan now.
Free Julian Assange!

Sweden shall did appeal against the Decision, but after Asking back,
the Investigator told, they have nothing to do with it!?

[Joit]

It sounds like the whole Speech from Obama about Talibans and Al Quaida is
a Lie.
A prepepered Speech from his Writer.
'They killed the old Leaders of the Group'.
I wanna know how this Groups are really oriented
and her Ideologies,
because Al Quaida is a Lie and connecting them with the Taliban is not right.
And not to forget about it, that there is Money, what moved from the CIA
to Al Quaida and other strange Connections what they have to this Group.

And after that, i missed anyhow H Clintons statement about,
that she did spy on UN Nations Members.

And all that founded wich her GREAT EFFORT on the WAR ON TERROR,
oh yeah, what is sooo hard to win.
Something really to puke.

Speech from R. Gates.
Taliban controls now lesser Area, and?
CIA got now more Drugs from the Fields ?

And None of them do really make a honest Impression.

[noises]

That was awesome, I just watched Ralph Nader table the ad that GetUp took out in the Washington Post and NYT in his opening comments at the Wikileaks hearing. I helped pay for that ad exceptions, rules etc.

edit, and getup just sent me a link to the ad in pdf.
https://www.getup.org.au/files/campaigns/nytad.pdf

[Aaron]

boycott Time magazine! lol

Notice how the guy who got the most votes came second to the guy who came tenth. Yes, tenth. Read it and weep.

I buy Time magazine once in a while but not anymore - thanks for the laugh!

Facebook took down "Anonymous'" page and Facebook is used for data
collection by the federal govt on people. So the spy on America website's
founder gets Person of the Year.

[noises]

You know, given the media climate over the last few days, I can almost understand what editorial decisions could drive Time to veto the popular vote. I say almost, because Time IS the media, and they should know better. I had more respect for them than this. I thought their editorial staff and their reporters would have been far more supportive. My decision to boycott them is based on the fact they've shown themselves to be afraid. Journalists can't do that. Especially not when they have results of a poll in their hands telling them to be brave.

If someone had leaned on them, I'd have expected Time to have published that fact instead, because wouldn't that be a HELL of a story! No, I am quite sure it was an in house editorial wimp out, and nothing more.

[noises]

Why a free press and a fee internet matter to me.

We live in an age where information is ammunition. Morality is progressing and evolving, as more of humanity become connected. We're able to share our thoughts freely, and see how others comment on the news, and be exposed to new ideas and even outlawed ways of thinking.

We're no longer confined to evaluating a limited set of data based on ideologies and thought patterns from those in our immediate physical environment. we're able, thanks to the internet, have our capacity for reason, and our exposure to data increased exponentially. We're getting smarter as a species because of this.

If I wanted to attack this new thinking paradigm of voluntary sharing of consciousness, I'd do two things. One, I'd regulate the data available to each citizen. Two, I'd punish people severely for holding or disseminating information I'd regulated. And of course, that would have to involve laws regulating what people can see on the internet, and a means of ensuring the masses were following that regulation without any participation or knowledge or effort on their part. In effect, I'd make it easier to keep people dumb by limiting what they can find out about. Know what net neutrality is all about? Exactly that.

If you can control what people KNOW you can control what people THINK.

In the past 20 years, the effort to regulate what people know, to kill off the idea of deductive reasoning, to ridicule and belittle those who are more intelligent then, say, good at sports or are pretty, - these things have been done with an aim to dumb you down. Same goes for breeding an environment of fear and distress. Anyone who does that to you after you've already shown a capacity for thinking freely is simply trying to hold you back, stop you from thinking, stop others from listening. trying to get you out of your higher cognitive functions and down into a place of fear and protection and instinctive withdrawal for security. They're trying to get your body to react and shut down your brain, literally.

The role of the press is to inform the public. Not to fill them with fear and paranoia and stop them from thinking. Good editors are brilliant, fearless people with impoverished, unlucky backgrounds who've fought tooth and nail into a position of importance, above their standing, with an aim to shaping the ideas of a community, to wise up like they did, people who were once good reporters, who've dug out their share of facts and know what lengths people go to to cover up their mistakes. Good reporters, who a good editor used to be once, know high level corruption and scandal makes the best stories for two reasons, One, the press has a right to and an obligation to inform the public, so they're operating within their charter and thus can't get in trouble for it, and two, since those scamming, dirty, insidious little ratbags abusing the corridors of power need to be outed by someone, it might as well be someone who can do it with impunity.

This can be frightening. When you're up against someone who's murdered before to keep secrets, it can be worse than frightening, it can be life threatening. But it's their job. And a good journalist wouldn't back down from a story that needed telling just because getting it means risking their life. In that sense, journalists can be heroes. Journalists have died in the field before, and make no mistake, if you want to be a writer, you're moving into the company of giants, and you've a legacy to uphold.

I have little respect for journalists who're nothing more than political or corporate lapdogs. Their real job is to simply tell us what's going on, no filtration or censorship or leaving out of details, and get the facts into the historical record. It's not their job to judge, or to be on anyone's side, or palm of anyone's misinformation. When not just one or two journalists, but entire news agencies all start shutting down one set of facts, and telling lies to the public they're supposed to inform, it's time to stop buying their news. It's time to stop advertising with them. It's time to stop contributing to them. It's time to find information from somewhere else, and hope the organisations you've boycotted go broke and can't lie to the public any more.

That's where the internet comes in. When the news fails it's public and becomes propagandists for the government and the corporations, the ability to be heard on the internet, and to hear others, is key. Without the ability to latch onto the stories as they happen and get the raw media feeds before the news corporations edit them down and spin them, I can't make up my own mind about anything any more. How many lives have been saved by alternative healing modalities? How many minds have been fired by the quest for free energy? and now, how many companies are being implicated, WITH EVIDENCE, for corruption? Do you see where this could go, where the people of the world could take this?

That's why a free internet matters to me, and it heartens me to see it's also a home for a truly free press. And I've gotta say I'm more than a little bit proud of the internet's evolving ability to protect itself through hive mind entities like Anonymous and through technologies like rapidly mirroring threatened websites. make no mistake, while this assange thing has been going on, the wikileaks website attacks that happened quietly in the background weren't the first assault in the war on free information. It wasn't the first battle, and it won't be the last.

[noises]

Wikileaks,the Espionage Act, and the Constitution - C-SPAN Video Library

3.5 hour video of the house senate committee hearing into wikileaks.
After watching that I can see that yes, there are factions seeking "punishment" for assange, but I see an overwhelming tendency for the committee to see this not as some doom and gloom situation in the US, but as a chance to address the massive over-classification in US government.

I hear some very rational speakers, some obviously biased speakers (Gabriel Schoenfeld and Keneth Wanstein, what do those guy's names have in common?) and note with some humor and affection that Ralph Nader is getting to sound more and more like one of my grandparents every time I hear him speak.

Overall though, I don't think, based on the senate hearing, that Julian Assange has much to worry about from factions in the US government who are out for his blood. I cannot say the reverse is entirely true.

[noises]

YouTube - Wikileaks' Julian Assange Speaks Ater Release On Bail

if you haven't seen it yet (I guess it's this years watergate.) Julian statement to the press on his release.

He speaks about his incarceration and time in solitary as giving him a chance to reflect on the plight of others held around the world in conditions worse than his, and to point out "these people need your attention too."

Yeah, using his own troubles to highlight awareness of the injustices suffered by others.

Doesn't sound like terrorist talk to me.

[noises]

WikiLeaks: Cables reveal U.S.-Cuban cooperation over drug smuggling - CNN.com

love.
your government.

I wonder if that's what wikileaks meant by taking down the corruption conspirators in the US govt, or if there's more evidence of more crimes to come, implicating bigger names?

[Joit]

I hear some very rational speakers, some obviously biased speakers (Gabriel Schoenfeld and Keneth Wanstein, what do those guy's names have in common?)

I wonder if Gabriel Schoenfeld is the same Person as here.
Author « Necessary Secrets – Gabriel Schoenfeld

Before joining Commentary, Schoenfeld was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, where he founded the research bulletin Soviet Prospects. Schoenfeld was an IREX Scholar at Moscow State University, holds a PhD from Harvard University’s Department of Government, and is a United States Chess Federation master. The father of three daughters, he lives in New York City.

The Video seems is not at this Link anymore.

[Aaron]

Australian PM admits Assange broke no law

Australian PM has to admit Assange didn't break any Australian law:
Australian PM Changes Tone on WikiLeaks -- NTDTV.com