3 ms·

hmm? you mean like every other journalistic entity out there? Journalistic Purity aside, WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity and did deserve our protection.

hmm? you mean like every other journalistic entity out there? Journalistic Purity aside, WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity and did deserve our protection. We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like. What kills me about this is that people seem to support that status quo. Lots of mumbling about how wikileaks should have redacted <whatever> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced by our government as soon as it suited them.

ars 15y ago
> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced I think it's for two reasons - a: They are not that silent - they released everything they had and the US couldn't do anything. So there isn't all that much to be outraged about. And b: I don't think that most people actually support them (their goals) anymore. I certainly don't. I did, but not anymore. Personally I think their leaks harmed things, and helped nothing. Especially the ones about Abbas. If people had actually believe the leaks were real and not US propaganda (yes I know how funny that sounds to you) those leaks could have easily started another Palestinian civil war (well a Fata vs Hamas war anyway). You may argue that the leaks actually did help, but that's not the perception I have. Maybe I'm manipulated by the media, could be. But it doesn't matter - if I am, then so are lots more. And that's why people are not more outraged.
- srl 15y ago
  _Personally I think their leaks harmed things, and helped nothing._ I agree. At least, I think that's probably true - I haven't extensively researched it. And yet, I nevertheless support wikileaks. News organizations aren't tasked with "helping things", they're tasked with "publishing things". And in the age of the social media pandemic, they're tasked with discovering and publishing things that couldn't be discovered and published by the masses - and a very large part (if not most) of that are things that governments do not want known. Obviously, journalistic organizations have the responsibility not to publish things that will clearly lead to harm - for instance, military plans in a hostile country, missile launch codes, or names and addresses of anonymous dissenters in /any/ country. Past that, I only ask for the dissemination information.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
damoncali 15y ago
Perhaps it is because the very concept of wikileaks is flawed from the start no matter your political persuasion. If it is successful, information will be out there. Powerful entities (including, but not limited to the US Government) can do one of at least things to counter that. 1) Drive actual secrets further underground and out of reach of wikileaks. 2) Use the leaks to spread disinformation/propaganda to their advantage. 3) Use violence, lies, and intimidation to help "shape" the form of the leaks. It was doomed from the start. It was either a politically motivated propaganda machine, in which case it's fair game; or it was a lofty, academic pursuit, in which case it was a game.
lotharbot 15y ago
> "WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity" WL and its supporters like to call it an "intelligence agency" (Assange himself has said this). That's more than just a "journalistic entity". Why is anyone surprised when various governments treat WL like an intelligence agency?
asdfasdghasdf 15y ago
I don't think we have established such a precedent. Wikileaks is still up. You can still donate to them. Visa and Mastercard have decided not to allow them as a customer, but I know of no evidence that says it was ordered by the US government (that's not to say it wasn't). Wikileaks's claim that this 'blockade' has shut them down is just based on the fact that they haven't been receiving a lot of donations since the embassy cable leak (http://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html http://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html). Of course, they haven't done anything interesting since then, either. Look at their own charts, and you see that their income is heavily correlated with major releases (etc. Collateral Murder in April, Embassy cables in December) and their current donations don't look that far removed from, say, September or May 2010. Even their own financial statements (http://wauland.de/files/2010_Transparenzbericht-Projekt04_de.pdf http://wauland.de/files/2010_Transparenzbericht-Projekt04_de...) say that most of their money came wire transfer (which is still possible and fully legal). This is definitely more an issue of people not wanting to donate than it is being not able to. Obviously, the best way to raise more funds would be to do more high-profile work; WikiLeaks is choosing to shut down all their high profile work. You say the government shut them down, but in fact they shut themselves down, as your parent comment mentions. They shut down their super-useful, award-winning site (eventually to be put back up as a read-only archive at http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks) and re-purposed themselves entirely to hyping up the five things they got from Brad Manning. Now, they're out of money, they're out of juicy Brad Manning leaks, they haven't even been accepting anything new since they shut themselves down, and so they're gonna drum up their little government-conspiracy thing that they do very, very well, to try to raise some more money.
- bandushrew 15y ago
  So your argument is that the arrest and ongoing prosecution of Assange(sp?), the shutdown of services from paypal++, visa, master card, bank of america, Western Union and Amazon had pretty much no noticeable effect on donations, was not the result of a coordinated effort by the US government and the real reason donations are down is because they haven't released any more leaks? sounds entirely plausible to me. would you like to buy a bridge? ++Hendrik Fulda, vice president of the Wau Holland Foundation, mentioned that the Foundation had been receiving twice as many donations through PayPal as through normal banks, before PayPal's decision to suspend WikiLeaks' account.

ars 15y ago

> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced I think it's for two reasons - a: They are not that silent - they released everything they had and the US couldn't do anything. So there isn't all that much to be outraged about. And b: I don't think that most people actually support them (their goals) anymore. I certainly don't. I did, but not anymore. Personally I think their leaks harmed things, and helped nothing. Especially the ones about Abbas. If people had actually believe the leaks were real and not US propaganda (yes I know how funny that sounds to you) those leaks could have easily started another Palestinian civil war (well a Fata vs Hamas war anyway). You may argue that the leaks actually did help, but that's not the perception I have. Maybe I'm manipulated by the media, could be. But it doesn't matter - if I am, then so are lots more. And that's why people are not more outraged.

srl 15y ago
_Personally I think their leaks harmed things, and helped nothing._ I agree. At least, I think that's probably true - I haven't extensively researched it. And yet, I nevertheless support wikileaks. News organizations aren't tasked with "helping things", they're tasked with "publishing things". And in the age of the social media pandemic, they're tasked with discovering and publishing things that couldn't be discovered and published by the masses - and a very large part (if not most) of that are things that governments do not want known. Obviously, journalistic organizations have the responsibility not to publish things that will clearly lead to harm - for instance, military plans in a hostile country, missile launch codes, or names and addresses of anonymous dissenters in /any/ country. Past that, I only ask for the dissemination information.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

damoncali 15y ago

Perhaps it is because the very concept of wikileaks is flawed from the start no matter your political persuasion. If it is successful, information will be out there. Powerful entities (including, but not limited to the US Government) can do one of at least things to counter that. 1) Drive actual secrets further underground and out of reach of wikileaks. 2) Use the leaks to spread disinformation/propaganda to their advantage. 3) Use violence, lies, and intimidation to help "shape" the form of the leaks. It was doomed from the start. It was either a politically motivated propaganda machine, in which case it's fair game; or it was a lofty, academic pursuit, in which case it was a game.

lotharbot 15y ago

> "WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity" WL and its supporters like to call it an "intelligence agency" (Assange himself has said this). That's more than just a "journalistic entity". Why is anyone surprised when various governments treat WL like an intelligence agency?

asdfasdghasdf 15y ago

I don't think we have established such a precedent. Wikileaks is still up. You can still donate to them. Visa and Mastercard have decided not to allow them as a customer, but I know of no evidence that says it was ordered by the US government (that's not to say it wasn't). Wikileaks's claim that this 'blockade' has shut them down is just based on the fact that they haven't been receiving a lot of donations since the embassy cable leak (http://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html http://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html). Of course, they haven't done anything interesting since then, either. Look at their own charts, and you see that their income is heavily correlated with major releases (etc. Collateral Murder in April, Embassy cables in December) and their current donations don't look that far removed from, say, September or May 2010. Even their own financial statements (http://wauland.de/files/2010_Transparenzbericht-Projekt04_de.pdf http://wauland.de/files/2010_Transparenzbericht-Projekt04_de...) say that most of their money came wire transfer (which is still possible and fully legal). This is definitely more an issue of people not wanting to donate than it is being not able to. Obviously, the best way to raise more funds would be to do more high-profile work; WikiLeaks is choosing to shut down all their high profile work. You say the government shut them down, but in fact they shut themselves down, as your parent comment mentions. They shut down their super-useful, award-winning site (eventually to be put back up as a read-only archive at http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks) and re-purposed themselves entirely to hyping up the five things they got from Brad Manning. Now, they're out of money, they're out of juicy Brad Manning leaks, they haven't even been accepting anything new since they shut themselves down, and so they're gonna drum up their little government-conspiracy thing that they do very, very well, to try to raise some more money.

bandushrew 15y ago
So your argument is that the arrest and ongoing prosecution of Assange(sp?), the shutdown of services from paypal++, visa, master card, bank of america, Western Union and Amazon had pretty much no noticeable effect on donations, was not the result of a coordinated effort by the US government and the real reason donations are down is because they haven't released any more leaks? sounds entirely plausible to me. would you like to buy a bridge? ++Hendrik Fulda, vice president of the Wau Holland Foundation, mentioned that the Foundation had been receiving twice as many donations through PayPal as through normal banks, before PayPal's decision to suspend WikiLeaks' account.