Assange Must Be Extradited
There is no doubt that Julian Assange should be extradited when his UK jail sentence ends. Justice demands it.
wikileaks
Assange Arrested
Julian Assange has been arrested by British Police inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London after his asylum was revoked.
UPDATE: Assange has been convicted of skipping bail and the US has requested his extradition.
Chelsea Manning Jailed
Whistleblower Chelsea Manning has allowed herself to be jailed for contempt of court. She says it’s a matter of principle. But what principle?
Julian Assange and the Streisand Effect.
Wikileaks has tried to silence media organisations on behalf of Julian Assange. Why is a ‘transparency’ organisation opposed to free speech and have they made things worse for the Aussie hacker?
UPDATE: The list has been leaked. Link in post.
Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
Some very quick initial thoughts on expected reactions.
Wikileaks unravels
In the space of a day Wikileaks managed to complain about another entity leaking information, threaten to dox pretty well every reporter, delete the tweet and then sound like Donald Trump.
Most allegations against Julian Assange dropped
Most of the allegations against Assange have been dropped but Swedish authorities still refuse to question him in London. And Assange still hasn’t been charged with a single crime.
Wikileaks – Sony Archives
A Wikileaks dump of documents relating to Sony shows a close working relationship with the US government. Implications also for Kim Dotcom.
Wikileaks releases TPP chapter
Another chapter of the secret draft TPP agreement has been leaked.
Finally!
Julian Assange to be allowed to answer to accusations…
We don’t know how lucky we are
Wikileaks have given us another glimpse at the reality behind the curtain of international diplomacy, and a “full and frank” assessment of New Zealand’s geopolitical insignificance…
US Embassy: Political Objectivity of NZ Media Questioned
Here’s an interesting Wikileaks cable on the ‘objectivity’ of the New Zealand msm, particularly the Herald. The cable relates to the period leading […]
Land of the free?
With so much going on in terms of large scale disasters at the moment, it is easy to lose track of the stories of a mere individuals. But there are two individuals who’s stories should not be forgotten. They are facing the full might and anger of the American establishment. Their “crime” was to tell the truth.
Private Bradley Manning
So, it’s Christmas; the season of good will and all. But for some of our institutions, juggernauts of bad will that they are, they just roll on regardless . For what it’s worth there is an on line letter you can sign calling on the US to end it’s inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning. Maybe signing it constitutes a Christmas message of sorts.
Diplomatic Stupidity
Do the wikileak cables illustrate just how stupid the diplomatic community is? What’s it all about? And why is our media not focussing any attention on this strange state of affairs where governments are seemingly informed by deaf and blind diplomats mouthing off?
Key, Brownlee & McCully have questions to answer
It seems we don’t have a government at the moment. John Key is incommunicado in Hawaii. The Acting PM, Bill English, and Key’s press people refuse to speak for him. Someone needs to front up because serious questions are emerging about the honesty of statements Gerry Brownlee and Murray McCully made in Parliament and to the New Zealand people.
Blood for milk? Pull the other one
It’s surreal to see people who cried that not going into Iraq has cost us a trade deal with the US, now saying that the Reconstruction Team Labour sent was to get access for our milk exports. The claim’s based on a US Embassy cable but that doesn’t make it gospel. In reality, the Right wanted us to fight in Iraq to get an FTA with the US.
Wikileaks NZ cables
Odd timing as everyone powers down for Christmas, but The Herald has published the NZ Wikileaks cables. A rather far fetched attack on Clark (covered by Eddie yesterday), the Nats breaking promises and misleading Parliament. But if that’s the worst in the cables then I’m guessing that politicians on both sides, past and present, will be vastly relieved.
Herald into smear mode for election year
It must be coming up to election year, because whenever I load Granny Herald there’s some ludicrous attack on Labour or love-piece on Key. The Herald on Sunday has some Wikileaks cables and the ones they’ve chosen to pre-release supposedly shows Labour was willing to give up the anti-nuke law but didn’t to win votes. They show no such thing. [Updated]
Wikileaks shows internet’s resilience against fools
A fascinating side-effect of the attacks at various levels on Wikileaks in the last week has been a demonstration of exactly how tough it is to take out a site without widespread support from people on the net.
renesys.blog has a excellent post looking at what has been happening to keep Wikileaks alive on the net.
ISOC looks at the extra-legal activity aimed at Wikileaks
ISOC – the internet society that is probably the closest thing that the internet has as a governing body said “Unless and until appropriate laws are brought to bear to take the wikileaks.org domain down legally, technical solutions should be sought to reestablish its proper presence, and appropriate actions taken to pursue and prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it off the air.”
We can probably expect that domain to be back on the air shortly.
Assange voluntarily goes to British court on extradition
Now that the Swedish prosecutors have finally given the British police a document that they can work with, Assange turned himself in, and […]
Marianne Ny: Making an arse of Swedish law.
The Wikileaks release of US government diplomatic wires is less interesting to me than the behavior of the Sweden’s director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny. Her charges and actions against Julian Assange indicate that she is driven more by the politics than respect for the law. I fail to see why Interpol is involved for such a minor charge. Apparently the charge is question is something pretty weird called “sex by surprise”
Welcome to the 21st Century!
Sometimes I find it hard to believe how the leaders of this world fail to comprehend what appears so obvious to me. In the Information Age, how do they think secrecy is viable? What is happening with Wikileaks, or more appropriately, what is about to happen, appears to be playing out along the same lines as the rise and fall of Napster.
What is all of the fuss about?
There has always been an inherent design conflict in giving widespread access to information. On one hand it allows better service for people and organisations. On the other hand it means that less material can be kept secret because giving more people access to information and more opportunity to whistleblow when people see a problem or an ethical conflict. That has always been the inherent conflict.
Who has “blood on their hands”?
Amongst other angry and aggressive rhetoric, American politicians have accused the leakers of the diplomatic cables of having “blood on their hands”. Will the leaked cables put lives at risk? Perhaps, but I believe that many more lives would be made safe if the actions and attitudes of our governments, and the “intelligence” that they work with, were more open to the people.
Leaked cables window into Superpower
Wikileaks latest coup is the release of a database of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables between American embassies, up to and including the highest security level “Top Secret”. The cables provide a full, detailed and explicit account of many of America’s diplomatic secrets and the attitudes behind them. It is a good long look through a window in to the mind of a Superpower.
A time of trouble, a time for action
The release of 400,000 classified documents on the Iraq war today highlights a much broader issue for New Zealand. As the world moves into uncertainty, some commentators call it a ‘new new world order’, New Zealand must establish itself definitively, cementing the values we wish to hold true for the coming century.
Truth out on wars
Deputy PM and leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, caused a bit of a sensation last week when he pronounced Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war illegal. And yesterday Wikileaks published a massive cache of American military files exposing the truth about the war in Afghanistan. Not a good week for warmongers.
Whistleblowers
Currently the “hunt” is on for whistleblowers in cases both within NZ, and internationally. When a whistleblower takes on a big organisation over a matter of genuine public significance they are taking a risk, in some cases a huge risk. Let’s hope that there will always be people who are brave enough to make sure that we the people know the truth.