WikiLeaks represents a clear and present danger to the United States government’s campaign of murder, occupation, torture, theft, spying and propaganda worldwide. That is why commentators such as Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post so strenuously demand that it be shut down. This is also why you must step forward in support of WikiLeaks, before its founder Julian Assange turns up shackled in a secret CIA prison overseas.
Don’t be fooled! WikiLeaks is a beacon of truth and liberty in a world under siege by the criminal enterprise called the United States government. Assange and his ragtag crew reveal this criminal gang’s secrets to the civilized world so that we might know them for who they are, and act accordingly. WikiLeaks is the latest star in a long series of truth-tellers, muckrakers and whistleblowers that have made ours a more civilized and just society. Its networked model is the future of our peaceful resistance to war, murder and other forms of aggression.
Let’s be clear: the United States government is putting good people in harm’s way. Not WikiLeaks. If WikiLeaks were to reveal a secret list of mafia hitmen and informers, would you accuse them of putting these criminals in jeopardy of being held accountable for their actions? Or would you cheer them for outing evildoers and saving innocent people’s lives? Only a fellow mafia hitman or mafia sympathizer would attack WikiLeaks for this kind of act.
Similarly, don’t stand for any government thug who says Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking the Collateral Murder video to WikiLeaks, should be executed. These thugs aim to swiftly and surely punish anyone who stands up for liberty and truth, to set an example of them so that you will be further intimidated.
The threats against Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are threats against you. While they are among the first to find the courage and wherewithal to stand up against the United Statesian Empire, you or someone you know could be next. Supporters of WikiLeaks would do well to indict Marc Thiessen, and anyone who threatens WikiLeaks, in the court of public opinion. Don’t wait another minute to do so!
20 replies on “Wikileaks Must be Protected and Respected”
http://youtube.com/townsendjim everyone who stands up against authority is a target. just remember the people ‘in authority’ are only in authority as long as they have the guns to back them up. when it comes to authority, nothing else matters…. there is a lesson here… jimi
Greetings Mr Donnelly,
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Doc Ellis 124
Glad you liked it, Doc. :)
A couple of things here:
@jim-It is not guns that keep people in power but votes. Maybe a history course would be good for you.
Also, there are things that a government needs to keep secret. A hypothetical: Three journalists are captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Through informants, undercover agents and intercepted communication transmissions, the army discovers where the journalists are being kept. Unfortunately, this information is also leaked to a place like wikileaks. When the special forces team storms the place where the hostages are kept, they have already been killed and the team suffers many deaths and injuries themselves. All because somebody believed that there should be no secrets. Would you consider this to be a ‘good’ thing?
I understand that our government engages in some unsavory behavior, but I do not believe that they are evil plotters, nor do they have some hidden agenda. Our treatment of the Indians and slaves was certainly bad but slowly we are getting better. Most of what was posted, at least those parts worth knowing, had already become more or less public knowledge by the time wikileaks put out the paperwork. As for the field intelligence reports are concerned, anything in these reports should be taken with a large grain of salt as they are derived from only one source.
I would trust trained and experienced journalists to treat sensitive information over the layman with an axe to grind any day of the week.
Votes keep people in power? Or money? Have you read Spooner’s Constitution of No Authority?
http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm
Of course the state needs to keep a lot of secrets. They started the war that led to the journalists being put in harm’s way. No state sympathizer wants people to realize that!
As if journalists don’t have axes to grind! Why do you fight so hard to deny yourself the truth? We all have the capacity to be experts. The truth need not be reserved for hand-picked minions of the elite.
It will take some time to wade through all the text of the link you provided, but despite my dislike of reading the screen I shall attempt it.
As to the other:
I was pretty sure that the Afghan war was started because of the taliban supported folks who flew into the trade center buildings. Now, if you are one of the conspiratorially minded people who think our government was behind it then there is no space for rational conversation. Trust me massive conspiracies cannot exist, humans are emotionally and psychologically incapable of keeping them clandestine.
But let us visit other periods in history. Do you think that no war is justified? Should we have let the Nazis sit around in Europe at their leisure? Or even more to the point, what about our own revolution against the British Monarchy?
As far as journalism goes, I am a very picky consumer of news and get it from a wide range of sources both here and overseas. As to the degree of experts, I would trust someone who went to school to learn about it, spent years and decades practicing it, building up sources and relationships and approaches stories with an open mind. I don’t doubt that there is bias out there, but I tend to ignore those outlets who practice it. I do think it would be a good idea if many of the conglomerates were broken up, but until that happens…
I do not agree with all of the foreign policy decisions made by our country, either now or in the past, however, considering our form of government, I would say that slowly but surely we are heading in the right direction. It is interesting to note that the more transparent government becomes, the less satisfied people are with it.
Until I can stage my revolution and install a philosopher-king type of government, we are stuck with what we have, but they don’t do a bad job for a plodding behemoth.
mcrumph, why is Osama bin Laden not on the FBI’s Most Wanted if he is indeed the mastermind?
Who is this “we” you talk about? The decision to go to war in Europe was made by a few bigwigs at the top and passed down. If there is to be war, it must be voluntary and must be paid for those who wish to wage it. It’s wrong to force other people to fund your pet projects.
Everyone has bias. Period. Any person who abdicates his judgment in favor of an expert handed down from on high is a mental slave. Good luck with that.
“Our country”? It ain’t mine bud. The only form of government I accept is self-government. If you think government is getting more transparent, then why the demand for WikiLeaks, and the hub-bub around it? That right there demonstrates how little transparency government concedes its subjects ’round these parts.
Stick your foot in the mud and submit if you like. Just don’t force your slavery on anyone else.
Oh, here we go…
Osama-Did you know that the FBI was a domestic law enforcement body only? Therefore, he would not be on the most wanted list would he? Application of knowledge and common sense.
So the public outcry after Pearl Harbor only justified combat against the Japanese, not their allies? Please expound. As far as I know WWII was paid for by the people. I notice you didn’t mention the revolution although perhaps you think that was voluntary and what not. But if the French maintained your point of view, and had not interfered we would still be British subjects. Please address when it is acceptable and when not.
I am willing to admit a certain degree of bias, but your wholesale condemnation of what I suppose you call the mainstream media belies a close-mindedness and naivete on your part. As far as abdicating my judgment because I don’t know enough about a subject everyone does that as well. I trust the translator to provide the correct words in the foreign movies and books I have; I trust physicists when they talk about the nature of the universe because I don’t know enough math to check their equations myself; I trust all sorts of people, including the cooks in the restaurants and the inspectors that, well, inspect them.
So what exactly do you mean by self government? Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law? I notice your site has quite a few bits about libertarianism, so do you think there should be no gun control, perhaps no control at all? Do away with social security, welfare, those kinds of drains on the government’s purse? Are you man enough to watch children starve in the street and tell them they deserve it? What about all these people who are unemployed now? Cut their benefits because it’s their fault they lost their jobs? That’s nothing but flummery.
I would find your rhetoric comical if I didn’t think you actually took yourself seriously. I have been all over this country and none of my rights have ever been impeded upon. I have traveled and done pretty much what I have wanted without any hassle from “the man.” I don’t really see how this makes me a slave, nor do I see any benefit from adopting what I can only see as anarchism, which seems to be at the base of what you espouse.
So tell me, what form of government would you advocate? How would your world be different? I look forward to your reply, but try to keep your tone civil, please.
mcrumph, you are simply incorrect that the FBI only deals with accused criminals located in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fbi
The FBI has an International Operations Division.
http://www.fbijobs.gov/311144.asp
And an International Terrorism Operations Section.
http://www.executivegov.com/2010/05/fbi-names-joseph-m-demarest-jr-asst-director-of-international-operations/
Actually I stand corrected, it looks like bin Laden *is* on the FBI’s most wanted list:
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/laden.htm
Here is just *one* case of the many they deal with:
http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/cole/cole.htm
“We quickly sent to Yemen more than 100 agents from our Counterterrorism Division, the FBI Laboratory, and various field offices.”
In the end, it doesn’t matter what the war’s PR campaign says. War that is funded by aggression and murders innocent people indiscriminately is wrong. In the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden if the US could show evidence of his involvement in 9/11. The US chose not to pursue this less costly and more discriminating method of bringing the alleged terrorists to justice.
People, in order to continue living, must take sustained action. They must use their brains to figure out how to find food, clothing, shelter and other items of use to them. Aggression interferes with a person’s ability to do this. Therefore, aggression (forcing people to do things against their will) is inconsistent with life and human nature. For this reason it is immoral. To choose otherwise is to value death over life. To continue living after making this choice is contradictory.
Again, war is only acceptable when participation is optional. Some aspects of the american revolution were optional, others weren’t.
Stop putting words in my mouth.
No, they don’t. Accepting a translation in a work of entertainment is qualitatively different from accepting someone else’s opinion that you don’t need to know the truth about what other people who claim to represent you are doing with your money (life).
Would you trust a lawyer you hired to defend you in court if he told you that you didn’t need to see the discovery that is being used to indict you? He’s an expert after all.
I see you like to assume, put words in other people’s mouths and generally caricature people you know nothing about. These are habits you will need to dispose of if you wish to have a genuine conversation with anyone.
Self-government is the idea that the only one qualified to govern you is you, and anyone whom you voluntarily allow to do so. It’s tightly connected to the non-aggression principle (NAP). The NAP is the idea that no one may use first force against another person. No one may start a fight with another. No one may use physical force, fraud or a threat of force against another person unprovoked. Within this family of ideas, only defensive force is acceptable, and IMO only to the extent necessary to deter the first use(r) of force. More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarchy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
You don’t need to agree with me. You don’t need to accept my principles or priorities. You don’t have to adopt my “system.” You simply need to refrain from aggressing against me, or supporting anyone who aggresses against me.
I advocate for no form of government. I don’t wish to change the world. I simply wish to live my life as I see fit, without hurting anyone, and without being hurt by anyone. This would not require many changes on the part of other people. It is simply the due of every human being to be treated with the minimal amount of respect required to not be aggressed upon.
It is you, sir, that need to keep your tone civil. You have a lot of nerve following up that last post with a request for civility from me.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Fear mongering, old bean?
Manning will spend a long time in prison for treason. Assange is personna non grata on US territory. End of story.
Getting more people killed to prove a point proved the point irrefutably.
I highly doubt that WikiLeaks has gotten anyone killed.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/30/taliban-says-it-will-target-names-exposed-by-wikileaks.html
You have sources for that, right? Newsweek doubts you are right. If you’ve done investigation of any kind from journalism to intel work, you know it’s a matter of timelines and multiple sources. So you and Newsweek get to it.
Len, let me know when someone is actually killed and where I can find the evidence that suggests it was because of WikiLeaks.
If there is a list out there, won’t the US recall those people? And if the US doesn’t recall them, isn’t the blood on the US’ hands?
Let’s put some real thought into this before jumping to conclusions, eh?
I was going to enter into a lengthy diatribe of examples and what not but I think I will avoid that. I will say this, though: I think that you and I see the world in very different ways (please correct me if my inferences are wrong). Whereas you see things in strict contrast, black and white, neither of these exist in my world where things are in infinite shades of gray.
You say in your post that if wikileaks were to post a list of hit men…&c. But what if they posted a list of undercover agents working inside the mob (perhaps slightly analogous to special operations personnel)? Would you still maintain your position? Also, you speak a lot about US murdering (I think somewhere in there you mention children, if not the post then the comments) people, but would you be as against it if this were the 1980s when the Russians were in Afghanistan. What I am getting at is this: Are you against murder and invasion, or only if the US does it?
I personally thought we should have gone into Rwanda in the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of people were being ‘ethnically cleansed’, but that certainly wouldn’t have been a popular thing to do (since you seem to base military use on popular opinion[?]). Lastly, on this day, in 1939, Germany signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Russia and they split Poland between themselves. Of course, Germany later reneged on this agreement. The problem with NAPs is that the world is full of people who want what they can get. Not everybody can be a Switzerland (thank God), and only they can get away with it because they have nothing anybody wants.
The Newsweek article does cite a name: Khalifa Abdullah and a source, Agha Lali, the deputy head of Kandahar’s provincial council.
All I ask is that you do the same. No, as far as I can tell, the Taliban isn’t saying “Thanks, we killed this one and this one because of WikiLeaks” and won’t. They will kill them anyway.
Intel is a sifting game. All they need are events and dates. Corroborating information does the rest and if they don’t have it from their own sources, others will give it to them.
Assange is playing script kiddie games with people’s lives. Don’t be too surprised when that catches up with him somewhere nor too eager to blame the US. Big game, lots of players, multiple agenda. No simple plots.
This black and white vs shades of gray is not only cliche but also a false dichotomy. Black and white are shades of grey. It’s also a smear tactic. The hidden message is: Your understanding is simplistic, mine is more complex with greater granularity. I find this to be entirely meaningless anyway, unless reference is made to pertinent example.
Whose special agents? That’s a critical part of the scenario you failed to color in. If they are government agents then what’s the fascination with them? How are they qualitatively different from mafia operatives?
And if they aren’t different, then why should I care about them being outed? It’s a war between two mafia.
I’m against first use of physical force or force substitutes (like threats and intimidation) by anyone.
Where did you get that idea?
The world is full of organizations whose raison d’etre is domination, control and concentration of wealth. Your example here is about exactly these organizations. Their goals and modi operandi is violence. So a non-aggression pact for them is obviously a sham. The same does not apply to individuals.
The US is playing games with people’s lives. They play games like imprisonment, torture, secret prison, bombing campaign, baby killing, depleted uranium poisoning, drone-killing of innocents and many more.
Assange is a hero who, at great risk to himself, is showing us the truth about these matters – straight from the horse’s mouth.
You said in response to my earlier posting that “Again, war is only acceptable when participation is optional. Some aspects of the american revolution were optional, others weren’t.” I took this to mean a popular level of action. Doesn’t the volunteer army, rather than the draft system, dictate this is a war of optional participation? And don’t the people whom we elect as representatives vote on our behalf as far as military engagement? Please explain your thoughts concerning these.
As far as the mafia example goes, if you were a store owner that was forced to pay “protection” money to the mob so your store wasn’t burned down, wouldn’t you be wanting the cops to do something about it? They then introduce undercover operatives to get evidence that will break up the mob (though only temporarily, usually) and send certain ones to prison.
For the black and white v shades of gray. Two points: Yes, the world is full of a variety of people and governments doing what they believe to be “right” in view of their own desires and interests; thus, there is no specific right or wrong, only differing viewpoints from the variety of sidelines. Secondly, what do you believe then? Do you think it is right to stand up for what you believe to be right even when you are not directly involved (hence my feelings concerning Rwanda)? If your neighbor came to you and said every weekend some thugs were coming around kicking his @$$ and stealing his tomatoes and asked you to help, would you? This is easy on a personal level because the cops can get involved but on the world stage there is no such police force. I only used the BW&G metaphor because you seem to have a cut and dried sense of understanding of when and when not involvement should be engaged. Please expand your thesis.
I can see why you might be confused, sorry. What I mean is that if there is to be a (defensive) war, it should be funded voluntarily and fought by volunteers. No one should be forced to pay for it or forced to participate in it.
No, because soldiers are not allowed to opt out of the war. It may seem paradoxical for a soldier to be able to opt out of a war, but many soldiers sign up to defend their country, not to wage wars of occupation and aggression. So when one of the latter comes up, soldiers should be allowed to opt out of it. That’s my criteria for it being voluntary and optional.
Also, currently not even soldiers’ unfavorable contracts are being honored by the government. Some are being forced to continue fighting even after their contracts are up, due to a shortage of new recruits. That’s not a voluntary arrangement either.
I haven’t appointed anyone to speak for me in Washington, DC. Have you? A vote does not create a legal or binding representation agreement. The vote is secret, so the men in Washington don’t know whom they are representing. I can’t see who these people are, in order to hold them accountable for their actions in support of wars of aggression and other misdeeds.
When I hire a lawyer, we sign a contract or make a verbal agreement. It is clear and transparent that he represents me in certain delimited matters. There is nothing like this for these people in Washington. I don’t see any evidence of them representing anyone but themselves, and perhaps their donors.
Which cops? The state ones that also charge protection money and operate with violence? No thanks, I don’t want to have anything to do with either of them.
Contractual or co-operative cops or friends with the means to do the job, yes I’d love those guys to help me. Anyone who can provide protective services without just becoming a new master sounds great.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your statement of fact (which I dispute but will overlook). The fact that among some people there is a diversity of opinion has no bearing on what the actual objective fact is.
Just because everyone thought the earth was flat or at the center of the solar system, didn’t make it so.
Absolutely. Tho I also think one has to do a personal cost/benefit analysis. The cost of organizing a small voluntary army to go stop atrocities overseas may be prohibitive. But I personally find it of the utmost importance to stand up for what one believes in. If you don’t, you’re squandering your opportunity to shape the world. What do you think?
I’d be inclined to do so but it depends on my relationship with him and the severity of the risk. If he had helped me out in the past or we were good friends and the risk was slight, definitely. If the risk of being killed was too high, probably not. If the guy was rude to me, no way.
Hope that helps.