Posts in "Wikileaks"

By Kenny Tan at 2:58PM

Jul 26, 2011

SA@TAC -- Wikileaks Revisited

Jack Hunter, AKA the Southern Avenger, takes a look back on Wikileaks and the aftermath.

Today, Julian Assange, the whistleblower and face of Wikileaks, is hardly talked about anymore on the mainstream media. Wikileaks has since become a credible news source. And the predictions about threats to national security created by Wikileaks have been proven false. The attacks on Wikileaks, last year, by politicians and mainstream media, are now thought of as shameful attempts led by the political establishment to censor information that would simply have embarassed the political class and threatened thier grip on power.

Posted in:

Add new comment

By James Maier at 10:17AM

Jul 2, 2011

Wikileaks Mastercard Commercial Parody

Check this out! It's a great parody of Mastercard commercials, made by the people behind Wikileaks/Julian Assange. The inspiration behind the video came from the fact that Mastercard blocked donations from their products to the whistle-blowing internet resource.

Posted in:

Add new comment

By Matt Cockerill at 2:23PM

Mar 16, 2011

Obama censors a critic of torture

I'm sure you all are aquainted with the story of Bradley Manning, the Army Private First Class who is suspected of leaking (among other things) a classified video depicting US Soldiers slaughtering Iraqi civilians. Despite having been convicted of nothing, Manning is being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, denied basic sleeping amentities such as a sheet and pillow, and forced to sleep in the nude. To my eye, this is torture, plain and simple (incidentally, the President apparently agrees, having previously characterized "forced nudity" as torture).

Recently, a high-level government official publicly admonished the conditions of Manning's detention as "ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid." As noted by Glenn Greenwald, the White House responded in a predictably hypocritical fashion:

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention as "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid," forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports, Crowley has "abruptly resigned" under "pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case." In other words, he was forced to "resign" -- i.e., fired.

What breathtaking, brazen hypocrisy! Consider: This is a president who, as a candidate, took pains not only to condemn torture, but to champion whistle-blowing.

Posted in:

2 comments

By Bonnie Kristian at 1:27PM

Mar 6, 2011

Regardless of your opinion on his actions, this is unconstitutional -- not to mention wrong.

The American soldier who leaked documents to Wikileaks has been in solitary confinement without even a conviction for nine months. Now, he is being subjected to forced nudity every night and during public inspection daily. If anyone doubts that our government is willing to torture its own citizens, doubt no more. Bradley Manning is just 23 years old.

Stephen Colbert on Wikileaks, Anonymous, and the Obama Administration

"That proves the government can't do anything right." -- Stephen Colbert

From PC Magazine:

Earlier in the segment, Colbert also gave his take on Anonymous' latest victim, security firm HB Gary. The California-based firm saw 71,800 e-mails published online on February 6, days after CEO Aaron Barr told the Financial Times he knew the identities of Anonymous. According to reports, Barr was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down the pro-WikiLeaks cyber vandals.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Andrew Sharp at 5:40PM

Feb 8, 2011

YALer Matt Schmitto on Wikileaks and Internet Freedom

Matt Schmitto, President of the Texas State University San Marcos Chapter of YAL, was quoted in The Prairie about Wikileaks and the coming attacks on internet freedom:

Matthew Schmitto, a member of the group Young Americans for Liberty, said he feels Wikileaks has not violated the Constitution because its founder, Julian Assange, is not an American.
“I don’t think Wikileaks is bound by our Constitution,” he said. “[They] owe no loyalty or anything else to the United States. If anything we should be thanking them for showing us [what] our government is using our tax money towards.”

....Schmitto said he foresees regulations against the Internet taking place. He expects fewer attempts to control freedom of the press.
“I definitely think that the government will continue to gather new regulations on the Internet in the future in an attempt to prevent something of this nature from happening again,” he said.
Schmitto said that U.S. government is already planning restrictions to pass into law.
“I think Wikileaks is going to dramatically affect the freedom of the Internet,” he said. “Senators and Congressmen have already begun writing up new legislation that will provide immense amounts of regulations in effect jeopardizing the freedom of the Internet that we are used to.”

Read the full article here.

Posted in:

Add new comment

By Jihan Huq at 11:29AM

Jan 17, 2011

Wikileaks and the Tunisian Crisis

Crisis

Amid violent protests and the desertion of its President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has been in serious political instability.

What is rather interesting in Tunisia's case is that of the Wikileaks connection to this crisis.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Megan Duffield at 4:42PM

Jan 13, 2011

Silver Circle's Rebel of the Week: YAL's John Jones

John Logan Jones is a retired American serviceman with top secret clearance who served in the American Air Force from 2005 to 2009 as an Afghan-Pashtu linguist and intelligence specialist. He has since then come out in support of Wikileaks and the free flow of information as well as taking up a number of libertarian causes like sound money and a Paulestinian reading of the Constitution, and has worked with groups such as Young Americans for Liberty. (He's also a big fan of Silver Circle!)

Last week a post of his entitled “I am a US Air Force Intelligence Veteran of the War in Afghanistan and I support Wikileaks,” from his blog “Crushing Bastards,” made the front page at Reddit.com and earned him 22,000 unique viewers, many of whom were subsequently exposed to other libertarian ideas. For this effort and his courageous and credible stance in favor of an open society, John Logan Jones is Silver Underground’s Rebel of the Week.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Megan Duffield at 5:03PM

Jan 4, 2011

Silver Circle: Will 2011 Be a Year of Transparency?

I'm optimistic. Wikileaks is still going strong. Julian Assange is out of government custody. The United Nations is set to investigate the conditions of alleged whistle blower, Bradley Manning, and a large swell of support from across the political spectrum is emerging in favor of the right to record one's interactions with public officials, especially the police. Even more surprisingly, Representative Ron Paul is going to chair the House Sub-Committee on Domestic Monetary Policy. What is the common theme of all these events? None other but a rational distrust of government secrecy.

Skepticism toward state power waxes and wanes. Moments like Watergate deeply impact how a generation views the political landscape. Where citizens might have originally trusted the institutions and most of the people involved, they began to think of them more as corrupt bums. With more leaks and secrets coming out everyday and more people recording their interactions with the arbiters of state power, those in power will either have to behave themselves better or crack down with an iron fist -- and I like to think it'd be the former option.

Read more here

Posted in: