Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

Just FYI, "sex by surprise" is not a legal term at all but Swedish slang for rape.

So "he's not accused of rape, he's accused of ::slang for rape::" is not really a convincing defense.

Ah I have been misled! I read somewhere that there was a difference. I wasn't defending him by the way, just jumping at the opportunity to be juvenile.

one key point is just the reminder that WikiLeaks worked with newspapers to select and redact the cables.

No, that's right. I just wish they'd been more drip-feedy. The "Collateral Murder" release was so effective because it was a single, hot issue. It got discussed for days, everywhere.

Forgive me for being in the dark here, but did Guardian, NY Times et al pay for access to this stuff? (AFAIK Wikileaks is a commercial organization that hoped to raise $5M in its first year of operation.)

x-post Not only did Wikileaks work with places like the NYT, the NYT double-checked some of its decisions with the State Department! So Wikileaks showed, say, the Times some cables, the Times told them what it suggested would be wise to redact, Wiki complied, then the NYT ran those decisions by the State Department, who of course offered its own suggestions which the Times in turn cherry picked, because the State Department had no real authority. I think this all came about because Wikileaks realized it was in the wrong to release info that, say, blew someone's top secret cover and put real lives at risk. Wiki showing it's willing to compromise demonstrates its not as coolly "information will be free" as it poses. Their idea of ethics is evolving.

roundtable on aljazeera, including greenwald:

http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish#p/u/1/hK3hq3aPl8k

pro wikileaks hax0rs taking down mastercard.com, oh yay

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12341830

Faisal Islam
@faisalislam

This is very serious now, not just the website ... RT @ruskin147: Customers seeing "a complete loss of service" on MasterCard Securecode
17 minutes ago via web Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens9155221module80913991photo_1264293344LisbethSalander.jpg

"securecode"

just in time for christmas!

american irritation with wikileaks about to tip over into full-blown rage

don't fuk w/ xmas shopping

http://forum.greytalk.com/public/style_emoticons/default/yay.gif

now they've infiltrated the greyhound network WHO IS NEXT

Assange backers in cyber retaliation over arrest (Reuters)

Next Glenn Beck will be pulling up 4chan on his screen to show us Assange's "backers."

Would love 4chan to go for Beck.

MasterCard Worldwide confirmed on Wednesday morning that the "MasterCard Directory Server" had gone down and that cardholders were experiencing service interruptions. The revelation was made as a massive denial of service attack was staged against MasterCard, ostensibly for refusing further payments to secrets outlet WikiLeaks.

"Please be advised that MasterCard SecureCode Support has detected a service disruption to the MasterCard Directory Server," MasterCard said. "The Directory Server service has been failed over to a secondary site however customers may still be experiencing intermittent connectivity issues. More information on the estimated time of recovery will be shared in due course."

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL3E6N80BW20101208?sp=true

"The Directory Server service has been failed over to a secondary site"

lol how's that workin out

xpost Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd otm

lol
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/08/astrology-websites-f.html

you know, i'd been looking for a new screen name..

Ellsberg weighs in: http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/public-accuracy-press-release

Wikileaks has quietly bolstered its electronic defenses as its operations have come under increasing financial and political pressure.

In the last few days, the portion of Wikileaks's infrastructure that relied on a company in Reno, Nevada has been shifted outside the US to a provider in Toronto. Instead of employing only one company to direct traffic to Wikileaks.ch — currently the organization's primary website — 14 providers are now being used to ensure redundancy in case of legal or extralegal attack.

As part of its technological counter-measures undertaken since Friday, Wikileaks has turned to servers operated by the Swedish Pirate Party, which previously signaled support for the document-sharing effort in August. The number of mirror sites continues to grow at the pace of one every few minutes, topping 1,000 on Tuesday.

lol/arrr @ swedish pirate party

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101208006660/en/MasterCard-Statement

meanwhile mastercard.com still refuses to load

trotsky on wikileaks

via george lazenby's twitter

War Room: Why is the left trying to smear a rape accuser?

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/07/julian_assange_rape_accuser_smeared

http://twitter.com/Anon_Operation

Well, they posted a link to hundreds and hundreds of credit-card numbers (w/ expiration dates), so that account's gone.

The willingness of Assange's supporters to wave away the rape allegations is sickening. Judging from comments on this Laurie Penny piece, the main reason for smearing the accusers as liars or CIA plants seems to be that it feels "a bit fishy". Obviously when it comes to making the US govt look bad, feminism gets thrown under a bus.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/12/julian-assange-rape-women

Someone's trying to sell the first 5,000 leaked diplomatic cables for Amazon.com's Kindle. Pay with Visa or PayPal for added irony:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004EEOLIU

xpost: The willingness of that feminist author to accept the rape allegations is just as sickening.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/09/deborah-orr-julian-assange-wikileaks

idk, doubting the accusations is p mnstrm, not just something weirdo NS commenters do

so im not sickened, just, well, unsurprised

i see the NS is doing the 'religion is actually left-wing' thing in its cover lol

xpost

stanm she doesn't 'accept' the allegations but, really? is it 'sickening' to believe rape accusations now?

Ridiculous comment, StanM - it's not about accepting them, it's about not dismissing or downplaying them out of hand just because you like the politics of the accused.

HM, I didn't say it was weird - I've seen it in mainstream columnists too - I just don't like it.

It's not rape.

And you know this how? Because you were there?

kate, i assume he's referring to the fact that the crime he's wanted in connection with is called something that doesn't translate at "rape" in swedish law, and maybe would not be rape in, e.g. british law.

obviously, like stan says, failing to recognize that a man wanted in connection with sexual assault is probably the victim of a cia plot is sickening though, and what makes it worst is that the author is a feminist.

i feel like there is probably an israel thread somewhere missing its stanm

Probably?

Possibly, I'd give you...

it's telling that something similar happened to ralph nader after he published his criticism of general motors:

"In early March 1966, several media outlets, including The New Republic and the New York Times, reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations.[14][15] Nader sued the company for invasion of privacy and settled the case for $284,000. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals, whose opinion in the case expanded tort law to cover "overzealous surveillance."[16]" -- wikipedia

how is that similar?!

If the woman withdraws consent and he ignores that then it's rape. This piece is good on why:

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/12/06/some-thoughts-on-sex-by-surprise/

how the fuck is that "telling"?

xxp

If nothing else, this case has proved how deeply conspiracy theorist thinking is sunk into the mainstream. I don't know whether or not this will turn out to be a stitch-up but the widespread assumption that it is just because it's "fishy" or "convenient" is not a sign of grown-up political debate.

Maybe at the very least the US will get some withdrawal of consent laws out of this, but I doubt it.

I mean, if ever Glenn Beck's blind partisanship and sensationalism could actually do some good, now's the time.

If nothing else, this case has proved how deeply conspiracy theorist thinking is sunk into the mainstream

haaang on though. wikileaks' defenders see a conspiracy in everything even without the rape thing. that's because of iraq-9/11-'the endless war' etc, but it's not like you didn't have the same thing over jfk/the zinoviev letter/the protocols of the elders of zion/___________

i suppose the internet has changed the number of global-scale, implausibly ambitious conspiracies that are kicking around

i feel like there is probably an israel thread somewhere missing its stanm

he's a man of many talents

I mean that because of the hugeness of WikiLeaks and the sense that the government is hiding shit from us, even if that shit is either too banal or too predictable or too clumsy to qualify as an actual conspiracy theory, it breeds a climate of suspicion and credulity so that any conspiracy theory will have (even) more traction, this being only the current example. And I don't meant that WikiLeaks shouldn't have done it - I just think that's the psychopolitical fallout.